HV 875 
.12 

Copy 1 



> 




I 



erican Baptist Publication Society 




I 






r 




"Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto 
me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."— matt. 19 : 14. 



Child and God 



BY 

Rev. m. C. Eamb 

Author of' 1 The Mormons and Their Bible ' 

" Every Creature " 

"Success in Soul Winning" 

" Heredity," etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 



American Baptist Publication Society 



1420 Chestnut Street 



^^^^^^^^^►P 






<& 



v<?s 



\Y 



UBRARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Copies deceived 

APR 15 1905 

Copyngnt tniry 

tiLHSS CC AXc No: 

COPY 6. 






Copyright 1905 
M. T. LAMB 



Published April, 1905 



jfrom tbc ipress of tbe 
Bmcrican baptist jpublication Society 



PREFACE 



WHILE the following treatise was written pri- 
marily in the interests of the homeless and outcast 
child, the author has kept constantly in view chil- 
dren universally, of whom the majority have no 
Christian training, while the remainder, though in 
professedly Christian homes, are too seldom re- 
garded as a sacred trust from God. It is exceedingly 
sad to contemplate the seeming carelessness of so 
many Christian parents as to the moral and spiritual 
surroundings of their children. 

It seems to this writer that if the Christian peo- 
ple of our country could once get a clear view of 
the real situation — that every child within their 
reach is God's child ; that he is intensely interested 
in its future ; that to rescue and save it is the 
grandest mission and the highest and the largest and 
the most sacred that can be committed to any intel- 
ligent being in God's universe — such a conception 
would revolutionize all our methods of child-training 
and speedily transform this wicked, ruined world 
into a very garden of God. 

To aid the reader in reaching up to this conception 
is the intent of this little volume. 

THE AUTHOR. 
Trenton, N. J., March i, 1905. 

iii 



INTRODUCTION 



THE author of these pages has courteously placed 
his manuscript in my hands for perusal in advance. 
I have been greatly interested in what he has to 
say. The subject which he discusses is one of the 
very greatest importance, both to the individual 
and to society. It is evident that the writer has the 
two indispensable qualifications for presenting it. 
He has enthusiasm and he has experience. With- 
out the former a perfect system, with the truest of 
conceptions and the wisest of methods, would prove 
a flat failure ; while without the latter the most de- 
voted efforts, with the noblest of impulses and the 
highest aims, would go wide of the mark. 

It is said that one-half of the world does not know 
how the other half lives. It might also be added of 
the upper half that it does not want to. And there 
is the trouble. Human nature is incarnate selfish- 
ness. Every one of us is the center of his own 
little world and he must look out upon the great 
world without through the green windows of his 
own little self. We are too easily content to stay 
within. It is easy to condemn, or to contemn, or to 
pity, or to patronize ; but it is not so easy to sym- 
pathize with and to help those who are less favored 
than we, We quickly turn philosophers and set to 

v 



vi INTRODUCTION 

accounting for it all. The submerged tenth is a 
constant factor in the world, we say, and we must 
beware of nervous prostration in undertaking to cor- 
rect what we cannot avoid. We have very good 
authority for believing that we are to have the poor 
with us always and we are not obliged to do much 
in the way of making the sacred doctrine untrue. 
This is the attitude of callous respectability. It is 
the complacency of the prospered. It is the selfish- 
ness of the well-clad, the well-fed, and the safe. 

In this way the Good Samaritan is forced to give 
way to the haughty Pharisee and, by and by, 
"willing to justify himself," he hatches out a pre- 
tentious philosophy of society which is indifferent 
to the cry of need and coldly unresponsive to the 
bitter wail which comes up from the poor. It is one 
of the fine symptoms of the times that there is so 
much of earnest and organized effort in behalf of 
the unfavored and the neglected classes in society. 
I know of no movement which has in it more of the 
true spirit of humanitarianism, more of the spirit of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, than this very work for which 
this little book pleads. It has won its way to recog- 
nized merit and to signal success. It has reached 
its ripest form in the approved effort to find open 
homes for homeless children. The child was made 
for the home and the home was made for the child ; 
and each without the other is incomplete, unhappy, 
and sad. It is a work of priceless worth, in the 
name of the Seeker and Saviour of the lost, to 
bring these two hemispheres of home life together. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Experience has brought its lessons to this work, 
as to many another. The almshouse, the institu- 
tion, and the boarding-house have all been left be- 
hind on the way of progress. It is not enough to 
take the little waif — a bundle of undeveloped, im- 
mortal possibilities — and make of him a pauper, or 
a machine, or even a boarder. He must be a child 
if he is ever to be a man. He must be given a 
home if he is ever to reach his best. And this is 
the goal of the child-saving work. It is nature's 
method ; it is God's method ; of course, then, it is 
the true method. 

The work of bringing the homeless child into the 
childless home is thrice blessed ; it blesses the 
child who is rescued from a career of idleness and 
aimlessness and vice ; it blesses the home which, 
without the prattle and the promise of childhood, 
though it be a grand and gilded palace, is only a 
house and not a home ; and it blesses the unselfish 
agency which, like some good angel, reunites those 
whom God hath joined together but whom some 
ruthless hand has torn asunder. 

But the problem of the waif is not more important 
than that of the pampered and petted child in its 
comfortable home. The very foundations of our 
domestic life are threatened by some of the forces 
that are at work to-day. The home is menaced and 
the integrity of the family circle, with all its hallow- 
ing bonds of life and love, is imperilled. There are 
many pretentious, pedagogic ideas which are ex- 
ploited by crabbed old bachelors and spinsters who 



viii INTRODUCTION 

know far more about the laboratory than they do 
about the nursery, and who are more expert in 
handling an abstract theory than they are in hand- 
ling a real flesh and blood child. Our good mothers 
knew more about the real art of training a child 
than their whole tribe ! 

The good old ideas and ideals of the Christian 
family will never be outworn or obsolete. As we 
go back nearer to them we are making progress 
of the truest sort. And there are no short cuts to 
that goal or patent twentieth-century methods of 
achieving it. It can come only by the recognition 
of the individuality, the responsibility, and the im- 
mortality of the child, the father to the man. The 
thought of what their little child is and of what it 
may come to be, is the great incentive and inspira- 
tion through all the years of patient instruction and 
training. Mr. Lamb's book presents this thought 
with great clearness and emphasis, and its effect can 
only be good upon Christian parents generally. 

I am sure that it is well suited to do much good 
and I trust that it may come into the hands of many 
a reader who will be led to lend his aid to this work, 
which is no more a service to humanity than it is to 
humanity's Saviour and Lord ; for will not he him- 
self say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me " ? 

Henry Collin Minton. 

Trenton, N. J., March, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Child Demanding attention u 

II. God's Child 25 

III. What Shall We do with Him? 40 

IV. The Christian Home 59 

V. The Children's home Society 70 

VI. The Great Objection 91 

VII. Some Practical Lessons 108 



IX 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 

THE child is more and more coming to the front, 
and for two reasons : 

i. Because God is coming to the front. 
His conclusions, his views of things are securing a 
recognition to-day as never before in the history of 
the world, and we are gradually climbing up where 
we can see the child from God's standpoint, and 
from his standpoint the child is always to the front. 
2. Because we are learning better than ever 
before that the future of the church, of the nation, 
and of the world depends upon the training we are 
giving the child of to-day, and very largely upon 
the first ten years of that child's training. More- 
over, the child that furnishes the most perplexing 
problem is the homeless, dependent child, because 
five-sevenths of the criminals in our country come 
from this class of children, and the criminal classes 
are on the increase, especially very young crim- 
inals. Hence earnest students of sociological prob- 
lems have come to consider the problem of the 

ii 



12 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



child, and especially the dependent and neglected 
child, as the problem of the hour. While, there- 
fore, this discussion is designed to be general, and 
to appeal to all Christian parents, we shall make 
prominent the cause of the dependent and neg- 
lected child. God takes a peculiar and tender 




interest in this class of children, as we shall see, 
and the Christian parent who has in any small 
degree reached God's thought and God's reason 
for his thought concerning the homeless and de- 
pendent child will have found his love and inter- 
est and his plans for the future of his own child 
immensely increased. For these reasons we es- 
pecially consider it. 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 13 

God's Interest in the Poor 

At the beginning of this discussion we call spe- 
cial attention to a very remarkable statement as to 
God's interest in the poor and unfortunate : 

Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; the 
Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. 

The Lord will preserve him, and keep him 
alive ; and he shall be blessed upon the earth ; and 
thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his 
enemies. 

The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of 
languishing ; thou wilt make all his bed in his 
sickness (Ps. 41 : 1-3). 

Here are seven large promises to the one who 
considers the poor : (1) He will be delivered in time 
of trouble ; (2) preserved ; (3) kept alive ; (4) 
blessed upon the earth; (5) not delivered to the 
will of his enemies ; (6) strengthened upon the bed 
of languishing ; (7) in sickness his bed made by the 
Almighty himself. 

Equally strong and seemingly extravagant are 
the statements in Isa. 58 : 6-12 to the person or 
persons who shall : 

(1) " Loose the bands of wickedness " ; (2) 
"undo heavy burdens"; (3) "let the oppressed 
go free"; (4) " break every yoke"; (5) "deal 
thy bread to the hungry"; (6) "bring the poor 
that are cast out to thy house "(note the kind of 
poor people — "cast out," that is, undesirable people, 
not wanted, in the way. And note again, bring 



14 THE CHILD AND GOD 

them "to thy house/' not send them to the "alms- 
house/' not provide comfortable quarters in the 
"orphanage" or the "home for the aged"; a 
closer fellowship, a deeper interest is suggested — 
bring them "to thy house"); (7) "cover the 
naked " ; (8) " draw out thy soul to the hungry " 
(not simply feed the hungry as in number five, but 
let your very soul be brought into touch with the 
needy one. If my Lord and Master were hungry, 
and I had the unspeakable privilege of feeding him, 
how would my whole soul be enlisted, "drawn out/' 
in the blessed service ! But now, in feeding this 
hungry one, perhaps the Master will say, " Ye have 
done it unto me") ; (9) " satisfy the afflicted soul." 
To the one who does these things what wonder- 
ful promises are made : 

Then shall thy light break forth as the morn- 
ing, and thine health shall spring forth speedily ; 
and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; the 
glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward. 

Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; 
thou shalt cry and he shall say, ' Here I am.' . . 

Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy 
darkness be as the noonday ; 

And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and 
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones ; 
and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a 
spring of water, whose waters fail not. 

And they that be of thee shall build the old waste 
places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many 
generations ; and thou shalt be called the repairer 
of the breech, the restorer of paths to dwell in. 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 1 5 

Marvelous promises ! Let us read them over 
again ! Read them carefully. What a world of 
meaning is pressed into each separate statement ! 
And all this to the one who cares for the unfor- 
tunate poor, for the hungry, the naked, the aban- 
doned ones ! How certainly and completely God 
takes the side of the needy, and counts everything 
done for such a one as done for himself ! How 
strong, for instance, the expression in Prov. 19 : 
17: "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth 
unto the Lord, and that which he hath given will 
he pay him again." 

The Purpose of this Treatise 

It is purposed in this little treatise to attempt 
briefly to answer a very interesting and practical 
question : " Why is God so deeply interested in the 
poor ? " And because this is a large subject, we 
will confine the discussion chiefly to one single class 
of the poor, a poor child. For there is no person 
on earth so exceedingly poor as a poor child, a little, 
helpless child that has been "cast out." 

Possibly the reader may wonder that we should 
even attempt to discuss the whys and wherefores 
of a question about which everybody is agreed. 
God loves little children ; we all believe that. 
There is no difference of opinion upon this point. 
But if we should ask each one of our readers per- 
sonally, "Why in your opinion does God love a 
little child ? " we would probably receive almost as 
many answers as there are readers. In a general 

B 



16 THE CHILD AND GOD 

way we would all say, "God loves all our race, 
loves the whole world with an infinite love ; and 
he loves because it is just like him to love. It is 
his nature to love. Love is the great central at- 
tribute of his being around which all his other 
attributes appear to revolve, and to gratify which 
they all seem to exist." But just why God should 
select the poor, and make them the objects of his 
peculiar attention it may not be so easy to discover. 
For evidently it is not enough to say that God gives 
special attention to the poor that are "cast out" 
because they are more in need of such interest and 
care. This may be true, is undoubtedly true, but 
there are evidently other reasons, deeper, broader 
reasons for God's peculiar interest in the needy 
ones, especially in the little helpless child that is 
homeless and has been " cast out." 

A Child Introduced 

Let us introduce to our readers a little child and 
see what we can discover. 

Suppose we bring a dirty little boy that has just 
been found on the corner of one of our streets. 
He has evidently met with an accident or some 
misfortune has come to him, for he is crying bit- 
terly. His clothes are torn almost into shreds and 
covered with mud, and his face is so disfigured with 
his crying and with the dust of the street, through 
which the hot tears have been plowing furrows,, 
that it is difficult at first to tell anything about the 
child, whose it is, whether high bred or low bred. 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 



17 



It may perchance be my child that has, unknown 
to me, gotten out upon the street and met with an 
accident. Or he may belong to a neighbor's family, 
perhaps one of the best, the most honored, most 
wealthy families in the city. It may perchance 
belong to one of 
the first families 
in our country, 
— has been kid- 
napped and left 
here this morn- 
ing in this sad 
plight. Or it 
may be, as it 
more likely 
would be, the 
abandoned, neg- 
lected child of 
some worth- 
less outcast of 
society. 

Let us briefly 
investigate the 
situation and 
see what we can see. If this crying, disfigured, 
dirty, and almost naked child shall prove to be my 
child, it goes without saying it will be immediately 
taken into my arms and tenderly, passionately em- 
braced and kissed and soothed, and then hurried 
home and washed and clothed. "My child in 
trouble ! My child had an accident ! There is 




l8 THE CHiLD AND GOD 

nothing on earth I would not sacrifice for my child, 
as dear to me as my own life." 

Or suppose we discover that this unfortunate 
little child belongs to one of the prominent families 
of the neighborhood. A carriage will immediately 
be ordered and the child be carefully and tenderly 
placed in it and carried to his home. Each one of 
us is ready and eager under such circumstances to 
lend a helping hand, glad if we can be foremost in 
the pleasant service of rescue and restoration. 

The President's Boy Kidnapped 

Again, if admissible, for the sake of illustration, 
let us suppose that the president of the United 
States has a boy who has been kidnapped and 
brought here this morning and left upon the street 
corner in the plight already described, crying 
piteously, covered with mud, and with clothes torn 
into shreds. No sooner would the boy's identity 
be discovered than the whole city would be thrown 
into the wildest excitement. The telegraph wires 
would immediately flash the news of his recovery 
to Washington, and in less than an hour, from 
Maine to California, the whole country would be 
apprised of his rescue. All the leading daily papers 
in New York and Philadelphia and adjacent cities 
would immediately send their best reporters to 
gather up for an eager public every possible item 
of information regarding the matter. All who had 
anything to do with the boy in any way would find 
themselves suddenly famous. Their names in large 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 19 

headlines would appear upon the front page of thou- 
sands of newspapers. And not only this country 
but the whole civilized world would be thrilled 
with the story of the strange kidnapping and the 
interesting rescue. 

A More Probable Solution 

But now, to come down to the most probable 
solution, let us suppose this dirty, crying boy found 
on the street corner proves to be "only a pauper 
whom nobody owns." We find out that he is the 
child of some worthless outcast, perhaps of noto- 
rious Jimmie Brown, once a bright, promising, and 
respectable young man with the best of blood run- 
ning in his veins. Now by excessive drinking and 
various debaucheries he has sunk to the lowest 
depths, has dragged his poor wife down into a pre- 
mature grave, and at last has abandoned this little 
boy whom we have found upon the street corner, 
motherless, homeless, heart-broken. 

Under these circumstances what will be said and 
what disposition will we make of this poor outcast ? 

In the first place, everybody who sees the little 
fellow crying so bitterly w\\\ pity him. Not one of us 
but would be willing to stop a moment, say a kind 
word, and perhaps give him a penny or a nickel to 
cheer him up. Now and then a big-hearted, moth- 
erly woman will stop, perhaps take him in her arms, 
wipe the dust and the tears from his face, and give 
him a real hearty kiss, while some practically dis- 
posed person may suggest that the poor boy needs 



20 THE CHILD AND GOD 

a suit of clothing and the nickels and dimes and 
quarters will be forthcoming and a plain but com- 
fortable new suit secured. But the boy cannot be 
left upon the street corner. What is the next step ? 
If the child is old enough to be " handy " about the 
house or barn some enterprising farmer or farmer's 
wife who has been on the lookout for additional 
help will bid for him at once. And then the inci- 
dent will end. By to-morrow it will have been 
largely forgotten by the most of us. No newspaper 
notoriety, no stirring of the public heart or con- 
science, no click of the telegraph, and perhaps not 
an individual outside of the few who happened to 
pass that street corner would ever hear of the affair. 

But if the boy is not old enough to be of use and 
must be cared for by the municipality or by private 
benevolence, before deciding what disposition shall 
be made of him — whether to bundle him into the 
first cab that comes along and send him to the alms- 
house or place him in the nearest orphanage or out 
to board at the expense of the county — let us draw 
a little closer to this boy and with a Christian's 
Bible in our hands and the Christian's hope as an 
eyeglass to aid us in our search for hidden treas- 
ures, combined with a little knowledge of the human 
soul and its destiny, let us look this little fellow 
over more carefully. 

And at the very threshold of our investigation we 
will find something that for want of a better name 
we will call an interesting " tag " attached to this 
boy, not tied to him with a string but written down 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 21 

plain and deep, as with the finger of God, and it 
reads after this fashion : 

" When my father and my mother forsake me, 
then the Lord will take me up," and before we 
have fully fathomed the meaning of these strange 
words we find another tag upon which is written, 
11 The Father of the fatherless." 

And we begin to open our eyes and say, " What 
do these words mean ? Is this child related to 
God ? Has he adopted it or is he wanting to adopt 
it ? Has he ' taken it up ' and is he willing to call 
himself its father ? Was that abandoned boy created 
in God's image ? " We thought him the offspring 
of the degraded Jimmie Brown, but we have dis- 
covered suggestions of a higher origin, of heredities 
that possibly may link him to the throne of the 
Eternal. Can it be that this dirty, ragged little 
urchin is, after all, the child of a King ? 

Let us continue our search for hidden treasures 
and see if we cannot obtain further light upon the 
profound mystery already suspected. 

Yes, that little abandoned, homeless outcast will 
be found written all over with the most astounding 
prophecies or suggestions. Here is another one : 
" It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven 
that one of these little ones shall perish." These 
words suggest deep interest on the part of God. His 
heart evidently has taken large stock in the future 
of that child. But there is also an intimation of 
anxiety lest after all this little child shall be allowed 
to perish. And if it goes to the almshouse or is 



22 THE CHILD AND GOD 

otherwise neglected it will certainly perish. Five- 
sevenths of all the criminals in our country have 
come from homeless children, from just such neg- 
lected little boys as this one. The president's boy 
would go to the bad just as easily and surely as this 
one if neglected or put in this boy's place. Notwith- 
standing all his noble inherited traits and qualities, 
there is nothing can save him from absolute ruin or 
fit him for the high position his birthright offers him 
but constant watchcare, persistent training, and the 
best and the highest environments. And this boy 
on the street corner is no exception to this rule, 
though the child of a king and prospective heir to 
a throne. Only persistent effort, Christian train- 
ing, and the lifelong environment of the highest 
type can fit that boy for the high place to which his 
divine birthright entitles him. 

And so we are prepared for another of those 
strange messages from the throne found stamped 
upon this little boy : 

" Whosoever will receive one of these little ones 
. — this little boy — in my name, receiveth me." 

That is to say, Jesus places himself by the side 
of this little boy and says to each one of his dis- 
ciples, "If you will take this boy into your home 
for my sake, or because he is dear to me, I will come 
with him and abide in your home ; he is my boy, 
my heart is bound up in the bundle of life with that 
boy. I go where he goes and will stay where he 
stays." God's unspeakable gift, the richest prize 
in God's universe, the "pearl of great price," offers 



THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 



23 



himself to the person or family who will take this 
little boy in. The Lord of lords and the King of 
kings will come into the home that opens to this 
ragged urchin. 

But there is one other message from heaven that 
is written all over the dust and rags and unfortunate 
heredities 
that, to a 
super ficial 
observer, 
stamp this 
boy as "only 
a pauper 
whom no- 
body owns." 
And this 
message 
from above 
contains a 
note of warn- 
ing combined 
with strange 
suggestions of wondrous import : " Take heed — be 
exceedingly careful — that ye despise not, neglect 
not, this little boy, for I say unto you that in heaven 
his angels do always behold the face of my Father 
which is in heaven. " 

The president's boy, if kidnapped and discovered 
here on our street corner, would command at once 
the telegraph wires and the newspaper reporters and 
the front page all over our land, but this abandoned 




24 THE CHILD AND GOD 

son of Jimmie Brown has a cohort of angels, known 
and recognized as "his angels," and these angels 
have constant access to the throne. And they 
report up there everything that is done down here 
for this boy or against him, and the Father of this 
fatherless boy hears, and hears with absorbing 
interest, and it is recorded up there, and by and by 
it will be announced before an assembled universe ; 
" inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
these " — to this poor boy — " ye did it not to me." 

God the Father therefore loves this poor boy and 
is intensely interested in him because he is his boy, 
his own child, born in his image, and therefore the 
inheritor of a wonderful future that only sin and 
Satan and depraving environments can cheat him 
out of. 



II 



GOD'S CHILD 

LET us give special attention to the last state- 
ment made, that because this boy is God's 
child, therefore a wonderful future is planned 
for him, pro- 
vided he can be 
placed in such 
surroundings as 
will lead him to 
Christ. 

In Matthew, 
the twenty -fifth 
chapter, Jesus 
says to those on 
his right hand, 
* ' C o m e ye 
blessed of my 
Father, inherit 
the kingdom 
prepared for 
you from the 
foundation of 

the world." We call the reader's attention to the 
word "inherit." To inherit a kingdom means vastly 
more than to be simply the subject of a kingdom. It 

25 




26 THE CHILD AND GOD 

means to inherit the throne, to become the rightful 
owner and controller of the kingdom. And hence 
we find in many wonderful passages that reveal the 
future of the saved, they are represented as kings, 
not as subjects. "I have appointed unto you a 
kingdom, and ye shall sit on thrones," Jesus says. 

We have counted not less than seven particulars 
wherein the redeemed from this world are, appar- 
ently, to have the advantage of the highest angels 
or archangels : 

i. They are to be the bride, the recognized wife 
of the great King : 

For the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his 
wife hath made herself ready (Rev. 19 : 7 ; see also 
Isa. 54 : 5 ; Rev. 19 : 9 ; 21 : 9). 

2. They are counted as brothers and sisters and 
therefore on a social equality with Jesus : 

For both he that sanctifieth and they who are 
sanctified are all of one ; for which cause he is not 
ashamed to call them brethren (Heb. 2:11). 

. . . the first-born among many brethren (Rom. 
8 : 29 ; see also Mark 3 : 35 ; John 15 : 15). 

3. They are to have bodies like his glorious body : 

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body (Phil. 3:21; 
see also 1 Cor. 15 : 47, 49). 

4. They will bear his image and appear like him 
in every particular ; 



god's child 27 

Partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1 : 4). 

Begotten of God (1 John 5 : 1). 

But we know that when he shall appear, we 
shall be like him (1 John 3:2; see also Rev. 22 : 
4; Eph. 1 : 23). 

5. They will share with him all his infinite 
wealth as to material possessions : 

He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; and 
I will be his God and he shall be my son (Rev. 

21 : 7). 

And if children, then heirs ; heirs of God and 
joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17; see also Gal. 
4 : 1, 7 ; 1 Cor. 3 : 21, 22). 

6. They will share with him his royal prerogatives, 
sit with him upon his throne, reign with him, etc. : 

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with 
me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am 
set down with my Father in his throne (Rev. 
3 : 21). 

And hath made us kings and priests unto God 
(Rev. 1 : 6). 

And they shall reign forever and ever (Rev. 

22 : 5). 

7. They will forever enjoy the distinction of 
priests, men who stand nearest to God and become 
his representatives to the people — teachers, God's 
ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, in a certain 
sense revealers of God : 



28 THE CHILD AND GOD 

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual 
house, a holy priesthood. . . 

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people (i Peter 
2 : 5, 9). 

And hath made us kings and priests unto God 
and his Father (Rev. i : 6). 

But they shall be priests of God and of Christ 
(Rev. 20 : 6). 

Now, shall I venture to say that not one of all 
these royal prerogatives is enjoyed by the angels ? 
They do not have material bodies like unto his 
glorious body. They were not begotten in his 
image, hence they are not reckoned as children, 
for " he took not upon him the nature of angels." 
They do not belong to the private family of the 
great King ; high lords, mighty princes they may 
be, but not blood relatives, members of the royal 
family. Neither do they sit with the King upon 
the throne ; they stand around the throne as wait- 
ing servants. They do not wear crowns, nor reign 
as kings, nor perform the office of priests ; nor are 
they counted as the bride of the great King, heav- 
en's queen ; neither are they heirs of the material 
universe ; nor counted as sharing with the Lord of 
lords and King of kings his honor and glory and an 
equal place with him in the tender love of the 
Father (John 15:9; 17 : 22, 23). 

Well, now, if God can see such a future in store 
for this boy, such a central place, so important to 
all the universe, on condition that the boy can be 



god's child 29 

rescued and saved, do you wonder that he is deeply, 
intensely interested in that boy ? And interested 
not simply because he is his boy and as such may 
be a member of the royal family forever, but be- 
cause he loves all the other intelligent beings who 
might be touched and helped and blessed by this 
boy while occupying the position of a king and a 
priest and an own brother to the great King during 
all the endless ages. For God can measure up and 
tabulate in his mind and thought all the glorious 
outcome, the sum of all the gracious influences 
going out from this boy during the ages to come, if 
only he can be rescued. 

But keeping this thought still in mind, let us 
come back to earthly things and estimate results 
that we are more capable of measuring. 

This little boy, the son of Jimmie Brown, we will 
say, is a fairly promising boy. He inherits from 
both his parents, born before the father had shat- 
tered his constitution by excesses, a healthy, robust 
body and an average brain. If that boy can have 
a first-class chance, can be led to Christ while very 
young and filled up with Bible truth, then given a 
good education and the very best of social and 
Christian influences, he will make his mark, some- 
thing of a mark, and be rated as among the very 
best in society. 

And have our readers tried to estimate how much 
that means ? It is said that each individual who is 
vigorous and healthy and lives to middle life or old 
age stands as the representative of one million souls 



30 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



within five hundred years. And this is easily fig- 
ured out. We have only to suppose that each 
individual life doubles itself every twenty-five 

years ; that is, 
in twenty-five 
years the one 
has become 
two, in fifty 
years the two 
have become 
four, in seven- 
ty-five years 
the four have in- 
creased to eight, 
and in one hun- 
dred years to 
sixteen. At this 
rate of increase, 
in two hundred 
and fifty years 
the one has be- 
come one thou- 
sand, and in two 
hundred and 
fifty years more 
each individual 
of these one 
thousand has become a thousand, and a thousand 
thousands make one million. 

An old man captured for God at the end of life 
stands alone without a successor. But that little 




William Bryan McKinley 



GOD'S CHILD 31 

child captured for God means twenty-five years 
later a Christian family, and in five hundred years 
a million human beings, the large majority of whom 
we may confidently believe saved eternally. So 
far as the purpose and force of this argument 
is concerned, it matters not whether a million 
descendants be reached in five hundred years or in 
one thousand years ; the lesson is the same. 

On the other hand, that little child left in the 
almshouse or in the slums without a home and a 
Christian training may mean in twenty-five years 
a family of roughs. 

Mr. R. L. Dugdale, in his little book entitled 
"The Jukes," traces through many generations 
the descendants of one neglected and vicious girl. 
The facts are simply terrible. He shows : 

That a very large proportion o % f the descendants of this 
woman became licentious, in the course of six generations 
52.40 per cent, of the females being harlots and 23.50 per cent. 
of the children illegitimate ; that there were seven and a half 
times more paupers among the women than among the aver- 
age women of the State, and nine times more paupers among 
the male descendants than among the average men of the 
State. Of seven hundred cases examined, two hundred and 
eighty became pauperized adults, and this study covered but 
about one-third of the family. Moreover, of these seven hun- 
dred only twenty-two had acquired property and eight of 
those had lost what they had gained. Seventy-six are known 
to have been convicted of crimes and punished, while it is 
scarcely to be doubted that more than double that number 
were really criminals. 1 

1 Quoted from a very valuable work on "Heredity and Christian Prob- 
lems," by Rev. Dr. A. H. Bradford. 

c 31 



32 THE CHILD AND GOD 

Now, over against this terrible history, place an- 
other, that of a Christian boy who, about two hun- 
dred years ago, came over from the old country and 

Ten years later became a deacon in a Baptist church. Seven 
generations since have counted a great host of Christian 
families, with at least a dozen ministers of the gospel, scores 
of deacons and Sunday-school superintendents, with teachers 
by the hundreds. One of these descendants, a great-grand- 
son, himself a minister of the gospel, became the father of 
sixteen children, every one of whom who lived to be old 
enough became an earnest Christian, four of them ministers 
of the gospel, one a Christian physician ; the ten who lived 
to mature life had large families of their own, averaging eight 
children each, among whom can be counted ministers, teach- 
ers, physicians, lawyers, authors, and Sunday-school workers 
by the score. 

One of these ministers is known to have been 
directly instrumental in leading at least half a 
thousand persons to Christ, nine-tenths of whom 
remained in the church, many of them becom- 
ing faithful workers, several of them successful 
ministers of the gospel. 

One million souls in five hundred years. And 
the character of every individual of that one million, 
with all the possibilities for good or for evil that lie 
in the path of each, may be influenced somewhat 
at least, possibly decided, by the character which 
we give or fail to give to this poor child we have 
found on the street corner. Tremendous thought ! 

Oh, how inconceivable are the interests that are 
packed into the chance we now give this boy. May 
God give wisdom and understanding and grace. 



GOD'S CHILD 



33 



If we could only climb up where we could see 
things as God can see them, how terribly in ear- 
nest would we become to secure for this ragged, 
dirty boy a first-class chance. We have found that 
God can see unspeakably important results to his 
kingdom by having this boy rescued, because of the 
important place 
he shall occupy 
during the eter- 
nal ages as a king 
and a priest unto 
God. But now, 
we have learned 
that not only this 
boy, but a great 
multitude of his 
natural descend- 
ants, possibly a 
million within 
fi v e hundred 
years, and who 
can tell how 
many more millions ere time shall end ? are also 
interested directly or indirectly in the chance we 
now give this boy. When we consider that each 
one of these million or millions of persons is just 
as important in the sight of God as this boy, each 
one of them may be lifted up as high and be- 
come as valuable to the universe, if he can be 
rescued and brought to Christ; and when we con- 
sider still further that the eternal destiny of a 




34 THE CHILD AND GOD 

great many of these descendants, possibly a large 
majority of them, is wrapped up to a certain extent 
in the character and the training that this ragged 
boy shall receive, how many thousand times is 
God's interest in this poor boy increased. For 
God can easily count up the sum total of all the 
influences either for good or for ill that each separate 
individual of these million descendants shall exert. 
But we are only just beginning to step out a little 
from the shore into the mighty ocean of influence. 
For God can see not only the influence that this 
one life may have upon the character and the 
eternal destiny of each one of his natural descend- 
ants to the end of time, but God can see even more 
astounding things than these. For this boy, if now 
given the very best chance, that is, if he is led to 
Christ in his boyhood, given a good education, filled 
with Bible truth, and placed under the best possible 
environment, will exert a saving and uplifting 
influence not only upon his own children, and 
through them his children's children, but he may 
exert a direct and saving influence upon hundreds 
and possibly thousands of those immediately around 
him. For every day of his life he is coming in 
contact with other people, and during forty or fifty 
years of Christian activities, no one can tell how 
many he may or might touch for good or inspire to 
a better life, if he is only taught how to do it. And 
each one of these persons will become a center of 
influence, as this boy ; each one of them possibly 
the head of a great multitude who shall also in their 



GOD'S CHILD 35 

turn become centers of influence more or less potent 
upon those around them. 

Now, if we are lost in the attempt to master so 
mighty a problem as this and find out how much 
God can see in this little ragged boy, if he can 
induce some one to receive him in his name and do 
for him all that love and wisdom and money can do 
to fit him for the largest possible destiny, we may 
have our conceptions still further enlarged and 
intensified as to God's interest in this boy by con- 
sidering the awfully tremendous fact that all these, 
to us immeasurable sums of influence, are to be 
decided in the majority of cases during the next ten 
years of that boy's life. 

"In all the history of a redeemed soul either in 
time or in eternity, his childhood period is by far 
the most important." 

Men do not easily assent to this proposition. It 
is natural to brush the child aside for more important 
matters. A dozen inquisitive little fellows will very 
likely be frowned out of the way, while we pay 

our respects to the Rev. Dr. C , to millionaire 

D , to Hon. Mr. G , or Judge H . Even 

in our home life Susan's little wants and heart 
troubles must take second place to the great matters 
of to-day's business. The sitting room must be 
tidied, and the dinner precisely on time, even 
though Charlie's lesson be neglected ; or, per- 
chance, though he is outside with a mischievous 
companion, taking another lesson that will soil his 
character possibly for life, perhaps for eternity. 



36 THE CHILD AND GOD 

It is difficult for us to fathom the full meaning of 
the Master's statement already briefly considered : 
" In heaven their angels do always behold the face 
of my Father, " indicating that up yonder children 
have the right of way, are objects of special interest 
and solicitude ; far more so than either Rev. Dr. 

C , or millionaire D , or Hon. Mr. G , 

or Judge H , and for the double reason that this 

child may yet occupy as wide a place, become as 
grand a man as either of these noted gentlemen ; 
and for the still more important reason that all its 
infinite possibilities are now at stake, and are 
crowded into the few brief years of its childhood. . 
The future of all these honorable gentlemen is 
already decided ; their place in time and in eternity 
is substantially fixed ; the next ten years of their 
life will make very little change in their position or 
prospects either here or hereafter. But how dif- 
ferent with the little child ; the next ten years ot 
its life practically determine everything as to its 
future ; its destiny for time and for eternity, whether 
it shall be saved or lost, and whether if saved, or if 
lost, it shall become a man or woman of influence 
and power to pull down or lift up a multitude ot 
other souls. All this will be largely decided during 
the next ten years. 

For the character is formed in childhood, the 
impressions made then are the ineffaceable ones. 
When a boy about fourteen or fifteen years of age, 
I committed the book of Matthew to memory one 
summer while employed on the home farm driving 



GOD'S CHILD 37 

two yoke of oxen on a plow. The feat was 
accomplished so that I could repeat the book from 
beginning to end. And that book is mine to-day, 
substantially so, at least. Though I cannot now 
repeat it as I could then, yet it is mine as no other 
portion of the sacred volume is mine. I have 
attempted since to commit various other portions 
of the Bible to memory, but I cannot remember 
them as I remember Matthew. And that book has 
entered into the formation of my character and life 
as no other portion of the holy Scriptures has been 
able to do. But so have the dirty, nasty stories 
that the hired man used to tell us boys while at 
work on the farm, in the same way entered into 
my life and helped to tone my character. I have 
wished a thousand times that I could banish those 
miserable stories from my memory and life ; but 
every little while they come up unbidden, as fresh 
and real almost as the day I heard them. A source 
of bitterest regret; a dreaded "octopus" that 1 
cannot shake off, whose tentacles are fastened way 
down on the foundations of my being and character 
these stories are. 

The statement that a boy reared in an almshouse 
until fourteen years old will almost certainly be a 
pauper for life 1 is only a confirmation of each one's 
personal experience. We are all very largely what 
we were made in childhood. We cannot get away 
from the memories and the habits and the impres- 
sions of our early days. 

1 See page 40. 



38 THE CHILD AND GOD 

" The president of a great university said he would 
give years of his life if he could forget the scenes 
and thoughts which came to him from his youth." 

O Christian parent, be careful what sort of hired 
man or hired woman, or what class of wild street 
arabs you allow to come in contact with your boy 
or girl. Do not cloud an entire life and handicap 
your child for eternity by allowing its young and 
tenacious memory to be filled up with thoughts and 
impressions that can only degrade and defile, and 
yet can never be effaced. 

But why discuss this even for a moment ; the 
thought is familiar to every thoughtful person. 
"As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined." The 
clay when soft can be molded as you please ; in the 
hands of the potter it can be fashioned into this or 
that vessel, as suits the potter's taste ; every little 
indentation or figure is easily made, whether of 
hideous look or beautiful contour. But once made 
it remains forever. A day's drying and a few 
hours' heat in the furnace renders those little 
finger marks fixed and unchangeable, except by 
immense and persevering effort. 

God evidently understands, as we cannot, this 
peculiar characteristic of childhood ; hence his 
intense interest to capture that child for heaven 
when its capture is easy ; to have the molding of 
that pliable clay before it becomes kiln-dried and 
heated in the furnace ; to have the direction of the 
little twig when every little bend and twist shall 
help to shape the beauty of the tree. 



GOD'S CHILD 39 

No wonder therefore that God is deeply interested 
in this ragged boy we have put before us ; that he 
can afford to appoint a cohort of angels to attend 
him ; that Jesus himself comes down by his side 
and offers the richest prize in God's universe to the 
one who will receive and care for him. 

What, then, shall we venture to do with this boy 
found to be the child of a King, presumptive heir 
to the throne, and containing in himself the seed 
germs of a possible million other kings ? 



Ill 

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 

A BRIEF glance at what we have been doing 
with him in the past may be suggestive 
reading, and possibly pave the way for a 
wiser answer to this question. 

In the working out of the great problem what to 
do with a homeless, outcast child, there have been 
at least four well-defined stages, each A great ad- 
vance over its predecessors — the almshouse, the 
orphanage or children's home, the boarding family, 
and the Christian home. 

THE ALMSHOUSE 

i. The almshouse was the first attempt to care 
for this class of children. But its utter inadequacy 
to meet the needs very soon became apparent for 
two special reasons : 

(i) The child is the father of the man. A pauper 
child means a pauper man, and probably a genera- 
tion of paupers. An intelligent man who had spent 
his life in the care of almshouses told the writer 
that " A boy reared in an almshouse until fourteen 
years of age will almost certainly be a pauper for 
life. Place him out in the best of families and he 
will drift back to the almshouse, If he remains out 
40 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 



41 



until married, and has a family of children, he will 
work his way back to the almshouse before he dies, 
taking his children with him." To rear a child, then, 




As Rescued from a County Poorhouse 



I was 



" For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat 
a stranger and ye took me in." 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren ye have done it unto me." 



42 THE CHILD AND GOD 

in an almshouse means a lifelong pauper, a genera- 
tion of paupers, very likely generations of paupers. 
(2) But still worse, the criminal instincts are 
easily developed in a child. The tendency with al) 
of us is to the bad ; the natural drift is with the cur- 
rent downward. It requires a struggle, an ener- 
getic effort to go up stream. Without the strongest 
kind of restraint and uplifting influences the average 
child will be a failure morally. How groundless then 
the hope that anything valuable, or even moder- 
ately respectable, can come from the child whose 
daily association is with all sorts of the shiftless 
and worthless and semi-criminals to be found in 
the average almshouse. A child reared in an alms- 
house means a wrecked manhood, as a rule, and a 
degenerate progeny. 

THE ORPHANAGE 

2. The natural step out of the almshouse was the 
institution, the orphanage without the almshouse 
drawbacks, A vast step in advance this, especially 
when the institution was founded, and is conducted 
by thoroughly Christian people, as they usually 
are. The up-to-date institution furnishes good, 
wholesome, moral restraint, a fairly good intellec- 
tual training, systematic and helpful physical cul- 
ture, etc. But the institutional life is not the nor- 
mal or natural one for the child. And the consensus 
of opinion by the best sociological experts is against 
it. While the child is guarded against a multitude 
of evil influences its development is abnormal, a 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 



43 



sort of hotbed growth. The plant reared in the 
hothouse lacks the strong, sturdy, hardy character 
of the plant grown out in the sun and exposed to 




Our Future Citizens. This Promising Group 
Received at the Same Time 

" Save the children and you save this country ; save 
this country and you save this world." 



the winds and the storms, and the sudden and some- 
times severe atmospherical changes. 

God did not put children into institutions, in 
groups, to be reared like flocks of sheep or herds of 



44 THE CHILD AND GOD 

cattle or schools of fish. He puts them in families, 
and usually one at a time. God places emphasis, 
an immense value upon each individual child, be- 
cause he has a vastly important and a unique place 
for each one to occupy during the future ages. 
Just as he creates each separate world by itself, 
with a distinct personality, a form and design and 
destiny peculiarly its own in the building up of his 
mighty universe, so he has arranged in the family 
life that each child shall be a unit, a unit too that 
is complete in itself, having a personality of its 
own, and destined both here and in the future life 
to a career that will require self-poise and independ- 
ence and strength, qualities not so likely to be 
developed in the institutional life. Not only does 
each child come alone into the world, but after its 
birth how speedily it succeeds in centering the life 
and thought and interest of the family circle upon 
itself. It becomes a little tyrant, a real despot, 
whose every want must be carefully and speedily 
met or there is trouble. Its very first instincts are 
thus a sort of prophecy of what it is destined to 
become in the amazing plan of God — a "king" 
and a "priest unto God." The family life rather 
than the institutional life furnishes the normal con- 
ditions for the nurture and the development of the 
child for its life here as well as for its life hereafter. 
But we had to reach this thought by gradual 
approaches, one step at a time. The institution 
was the logical and natural escape from the alms- 
house, and has proved of inestimable value to a vast 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 45 

number of children who would otherwise have be- 
come criminals or paupers. It has proved of value 
also as an object-lesson for earnest philanthropists 
and students of sociology and lovers of children. It 
has helped immensely in the study of the child prob- 
lem, and if it has itself furnished the clear evidence 
that institutional life is not the normal life for a child, 
it has nevertheless earned a title to the lasting grati- 
tude of the Christian world. It has proved a half- 
way house between the almshouse and the family, 
and the distance between these two is so great that 
it is questionable whether the social conscience or 
the Christian conscience could ever have spanned 
it without the help of this half-way halting-place. 

THE BOARDING FAMILY 

3. The third step has therefore already been 
reached, the family life, the natural, normal life for 
every child. These poor children have been de- 
prived of this blessed boon, a real home. The 
parents have died or they have abandoned their 
children, or remorseless poverty or sheer shiftless- 
ness has unfitted them for this sacred trust, and 
these children are without a home. What shall be 
done for them ? The public conscience will no 
longer consent to their committal to the almshouse, 
except possibly for a few days ; and the best minds 
and largest hearts of to-day have decided against the 
institution as a permanent home for their education 
and training. A real home, family life is the life these 
children need and the life their own natures ardently 

45 



46 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



crave. But there are obstacles in the way, grave, 
and some of them apparently insurmountable. 

In the first place, families that perhaps are most 
in need of a child, and have the means in abun- 
dance for providing a good home for one, do not 





pr*^ w ■■*" 




-v. 


MJTmKM 


1 \ii-3 








if 


Hwva 


bHL * ''&fc~ 




ipsP 




Hi 


r^^^^^^^ 





'The Soul's Awakening" 



A White Child Rescued 

from Negroes 

in December, 1901 



Same Child a Few Weeks Later 

as Adopted in 

a Christian Home 



want it. A " gilt-edged " child they might take; 
the child of some respectable relative, or of a family 
whose social standing was on a par with their own, 
but they could never think of taking such children 
as these unfortunates from the lower classes ! This 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 47 

has been one of the most difficult things to over- 
come, especially here in the East. Misconceptions 
as to heredity are almost universal. Indeed, false 
ideas of caste seem to be natural ; they are inbred. 
"We are the people/' "Our blood is A No. 1 
blood/' is a conceit not confined to the " Four 
Hundred " by any manner of means. Aristocracy 
is in all our veins. The world was made and re- 
volves chiefly for us, and those persons are simply 
unfortunate who are not closely related to us either 
by blood or marriage or business relation, or who 
happen not to be wealthy. Of course plenty of 
money usually atones for almost all kinds of bad 
heredities ! It is exceedingly hard to get rid of the 
idea that the poor classes, especially the children 
of misfortune, belong to an inferior race, second- 
grade people whose birthright and inheritance is a 
menial life, a life of servitude. 

The idea that the child from the lowest and most 
degraded surroundings may have fairly good blood 
in its veins, and at all events should be placed in a 
first-class Christian family, not as a servant, but 
given all the exalted opportunities of an own child, 
appears simply "awful" in the estimation of a 
multitude of very wise people ! The agents of the 
Children's Home Society have even been accused 
of imposition when they place a child of unknown 
or of known bad heredities in a nice family ! And 
the suggestion has been made that such outrageous 
proceedings should be stopped by statutory laws if 
they could not otherwise be prevented ! 

D 



48 THE CHILD AND GOD 

This caste prejudice is more prevalent in the 
Eastern than in the Western States, perhaps be- 
cause we have studied the subject of heredity more 
thoroughly ! 

At all events, after the revolt against institu- 
tional life, there appeared no other way of getting 
these unfortunate children into family homes here in 
the East, except to pay for their board. It was found 
that by paying an amount equivalent to the average 
cost of keeping the child in the institution, one dol- 
lar and fifty cents to two dollars per week, with the 
cost of clothing and medical attendance added, 
a sufficient number of respectable families would 
open their doors. And because families in some 
instances would become so much attached to their 
boarders as to decide to take them as their own, 
and thus relieve the municipality of their further 
support, advocates of this boarding-out system have 
become very positive in their convictions that it 
is the system and answers the puzzling problem 
"What shall be done with the dependent chil- 
dren ? " more satisfactorily than any other system 
yet devised. This boarding-out system has grown 
into such favor that it has become the prevailing 
method in the States of Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and four years 
ago was adopted in New Jersey by legal enactment, 
and partially adopted in other States, in a modified 
form in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 

This boarding-out system has some desirable 
considerations in its favor as compared with the 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 49 

institutional life that it is designed to supersede. 
But there are objections to the system that are ab- 
solutely fatal to its claim as the ideal system. I 
have in hand the annual reports of the Children's 
Aid Society of Pennsylvania for eight years. This 
is one of the largest and most reputable of the older 
child-saving agencies in this country. During these 
eight years two thousand one hundred and twenty- 
three dependent children were under their control. 
Seven hundred of these were pauper children, that 
is children who had been committed to various alms- 
houses in the State and by the almshouse authorities 
placed under the control of this Aid Society. 

A careful study of these eight annual reports sug- 
gests some weaknesses in the system. 

It is an expensive system ; not expensive as com- 
pared with the two older systems, the almshouse 
and the orphanage. But as compared with the 
new plan, the ideal or God's plan, the boarding-out 
system is exceedingly expensive. The money con- 
sideration, however, is not the matter of most im- 
portance. The boarding-out system fails to secure 
a teal home for the child. Even when most effi- 
ciently administered, as in Pennsylvania, where 
great wisdom has for the most part been displayed 
in the selection of the best available homes, fol- 
lowed too by a very admirable system of oversight, 
with rigid rules as to the child's attendance upon 
the day-school, the Sabbath-school, and the church, 
it has failed in that respect. The best boarding- 
house in the world, even though located in the 



50 THE CHILD AND GOD 

country with ideal surroundings, can never take 
the place of a real home in the thought and the 
heart and the life of a child. 

In the first place, it is unfortunate that the appeal 
must be made to the mercenary side of our nature 
to induce the family to take a child. The pay for 
its board was the inducement held out and ac- 
cepted. In our opinion there are only two motives 
in the human heart that are sufficiently strong and 
sufficiently God-like to insure the highest interests 
of a child — real parental affection, and love for 
God. That person who can see in the child his 
own flesh and blood, or learns to recognize the 
new-comer as such, and love it as though it were 
his very own ; and that other person who loves 
God supremely and gets a clear view of God's in- 
terest in a homeless child, his great yearning for 
its rescue, and why he is interested, and then takes 
that child to his home and his heart, with an intel-' 
ligent purpose to aid in accomplishing God's wish 
and plan — these two persons can be safely trusted 1 
with the raising of a child, a young immortal. Any 
lower motive, especially the mercenary one, may 
mean neglect or disaster. For the child is regarded 
as a boarder. The neighbors and the neighbors' 
children all know that this child is simply a boarder, 
and a charity boarder at that ; the chief factor in 
the acceptance and in the retaining of this child by 
the family being the pay received from the State or 
from a large benevolent organization. And this 

1 For an exception to the first of these persons see pp. 108, 109. 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 5 1 

mercenary spirit naturally grows stronger. If the 
child remains in the family for years, it will at first 
be received with much affection. Its helplessness 
and its innocency will appeal irresistibly to the 
heart of those who have it in charge. But as the 
child grows into independence and becomes self- 
willed and perhaps saucy, and difficult to manage, 
and begins to exhibit unmistakable traits of un- 
fortunate heredities, it will require a deeper interest 
than the paltry sum received for the child's board 
to make that family willing to grapple with the 
situation with a firm hand and a strong purpose. 

A practical illustration of this statement was 
given the writer several years ago by a prominent 
Presbyterian pastor who had previously been a 
pastor in Pennsylvania, and was personally ac- 
quainted with the incident. A little boy named 
Tommy was taken by a family with the full inten- 
tion of adopting him, but it finally concluded "as 
that course would cut off the money received from 
the county for his board, amounting to one hun- 
dred dollars a year, not to do so." The outcome 
was very unfortunate : " I saw Tommy last Sum- 
mer and he is a specimen of humanity of which 
very few people would be proud. For the last few 
years he has been cast out to the tender mercies 
of mankind to make his own way." 

That this is not an exceptional case becomes 
very apparent as we study the eight annual reports 
of the Children's Aid Society of Pennsylvania. 
During these eight years, with two thousand one 



52 THE CHILD AND GOD 

hundred and twenty-three children under its care, 
only seventeen are reported as adopted. In 1894 and 

1897, four were adopted each year ; in 1896 and 

1898, three each year ; in 1895, 1900, and 1901, one 
each year ; and in 1899, not one was adopted. In 
the report for 1897, we learn that of the four adopted 
that year, one of them had been kept by the 
family nine years before papers of adoption were 
taken out, and the child was then thirteen years 
old. That is to say, the family put off adoption 
for nine years in order to secure the one hundred 
dollars each year for its board. And when the 
child reached the age of thirteen, and they could no 
longer receive pay for its board (under the rules of the 
Society), then they took out papers of adoption. Two 
of the other children were boarded for five years 
each, and the fourth one three years before adop- 
tion papers were called for. Here are four cases 
only during an entire year where love for the child 
survived the onslaught of mammon. The society 
during that year had eight hundred and seventy- 
three children under its care, and at the close of 
the year had four hundred and thirty for whom it 
was still paying board. 

Of course, it was not altogether the sop of one 
hundred dollars a year board money that prevented 
all these other four hundred and thirty children, 
or any considerable portion of them from being 
adopted. In many cases, it was the " caste prej- 
udice " already alluded to, and the fact that these 
were known to be "charity children " by the 




Twelve of These Unfortunates 



54 THE CHILD AND GOD 

neighbors and the friends of these various families. 
Fastidious and hypercritical people would laugh at 
them, or possibly sneer at the very suggestion that 
a "family of the social standing of Mr. and Mrs. 

H could be willing to take a * charity ' child as 

its own child ; a child of unfortunate antecedents, 
as the most of them are, and who probably has hid 
in its blood all sorts of mischievous and dangerous 
tendencies. " These families will not adopt these 
children as their own, but for the consideration of 
one hundred dollars per year, they will keep them 
in their own families just the same ; in constant 
touch and most familiar intercourse with their own 
children ; helping to mold the characters and dis- 
tribute their poison — if there be poison in their 
blood — to every young and tender member of the 
household. This is all right in the estimation of 
these fastidious and hypercritical people. They can 
discover no objection to having these children in the 
family, provided the family does not adopt them. 

But whatever may be the reason, the fact re- 
mains that the boarding-out system appears to be 
fatal to the dearest interest of the child in the 
matter of adoption. Here in Pennsylvania is a large 
society equipped with the best possible facilities 
and with large wisdom and long years of experience, 
having two thousand one hundred and twenty-three 
children pass through its hand, and at least one-half 
of this number boarded in the country in plain, sub- 
stantial, respectable homes for a period averaging 
from one to ten or twelve years each, and only 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 



55 



seventeen out of them all have succeeded in so 
winning their way into the hearts of these families 
as to secure the blessings of a real, true home by 
legal adoption. 1 This is certainly not encouraging. 
Something is evidently wrong somewhere. Lit- 
tle innocent children are wonderfully winsome. It 
would require a mighty counter current to success- 




As Received Through 
the Court 



Eighteen Months Later 

Adoptel as an Only Child 

in a Christian Family 



fully resist the magnet of their eloquent appeals for 
true love and a real home. But caste prejudice 
and the love of money are well-nigh irresistible ; 
and if these do not account for the turning down 
and the blighting of so many of these precious 

1 The experience of the State Board of Children's Guardians in New 
Jersey is much the same. During- the first three years, one thousand two 
hundred and seventy-nine children came under their control, and four hun- 
dred and twenty-three of these were still in their hands at the end of the 
third year— but only eight had been adopted. See Report for 1902. 



56 THE CHILD AND GOD 

lives ana precious souls, then let the friends of the 
boarding-out system explain. 

And for a brief moment let us consider what it 
means to a child to be deprived of this great privi- 
lege, legal adoption. Not to be adopted but treated as 
a public charge, the child is denied many privileges 
that an own child secures. The following letter from 
a ward of the New Jersey Children's Home Society 
who has been adopted is very suggestive : 

I am getting to be a very big girl, and 1 will be thirteen 

years old on May . Mamma is going to give me a silver 

watch for my birthday, and papa is going to give me a gold 
ring. I got an organ for Christmas. I am taking music 
lessons every week. I have a wheel which I got when I was 
twelve years old, and I like it very much. Mamma and papa 
are as kind to me as they can be, and I almost get everything 
that I want. 

A child boarded out would hardly be provided 
with watches, rings, organs, music lessons, wheels, 
and a multitude of other pleasant and desirable 
things that love furnishes. 

An adopted child has a great many other advan- 
tages over a ward of the State. He is not turned 
loose at fifteen years of age to look out for himself, 
but tenderly cared for until of age, taught a lucra- 
tive trade, perhaps is admitted into partnership 
with his father, and at the father's death becomes 
his heir. All these special privileges of a son and 
a multitude more that will readily occur to the 
reader are not enjoyed by the child boarded out, or 
by a ward of the State, however cared for. 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 



57 



We believe fully in the statement of our fore- 
fathers that "All men are created free and equal/' 
and among other inalienable rights are "life, liberty. 




Drifting 

As Rescued from 
the Slua\s 



Anchored 

After Five Months in a 
Christian Family 



and the pursuit of happiness. " That little innocent 
child is not to blame because its father was unfor- 
tunate, and it ought not to be punished for life be- 
cause of that fact. But if the old ideas of caste are 



58 THE CHILD AND GOD 

correct, then the institutional life or the boarding- 
out system is the proper method for the training of 
this class of children. Either system will do well 
enough all that is needed to be done for these chil- 
dren. That is, it will fit them for a life of servi- 
tude, and perhaps make them content with a second- 
rate station for life. At least, by years of persistent 
drilling, they are taught to look on resignedly and 
see happy children all around them receive all sorts 
of tender love tokens, valuable presents, special 
school privileges, business opportunities, an heir- 
ship to valuable estates, or other perquisites forever 
denied to them. 

But if our contention is correct, then these old 
systems are awkward blunders, the rude attempts 
of beginners in the science of sociology. They are 
worse than blunders because they are dealing with 
young immortals ; pardonable perhaps, because 
done in our ignorance, but nevertheless real rob- 
beries. They rob the child, they rob society, they 
rob God, and rob God's universe of immeasurable 
good that might accrue had those children secured 
another kind of training and environment. We 
show to you, therefore, a more excellent way. 



IV 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

WE are prepared, then, for the fourth stage in 
the development of the child-saving prob- 
lem, the Christian home. First, the alms- 
house ; second, the orphanage ; third, the boarding 
family ; and fourth, the Christian home. The last 
two terms are used relatively. They are not in- 
tended to describe character, but motive. By the 
boarding family is meant the family that takes the 
child without a Christian motive in the taking; 
takes it for the pay offered for its board, or for the 
service it is expected to get out of the child in the 
form of work. In this class is a multitude of the 
very best Christian families, but their Christian 
principles and motives take second place in the re- 
ception of this child. They have been governed 
chiefly by pecuniary considerations, perhaps be- 
cause they have not yet learned how to bring 
Christ prominently into their daily life and their 
business plans ; more likely, however, because 
they have never stopped to consider what an im- 
mensely important matter it is, this assuming charge 
of a priceless soul, educating and training a future 
king and priest unto God. 

By the term " Christian home " is simply meant 

59 



6o 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



a family that takes a child for Christ's sake, takes 
it to help save it. This is God's plan, and there- 
fore the highest, the ideal plan, and is plainly and 

fully set forth in 
the words al- 
ready consider- 
ed : "Whoso- 
ever will receive 
one such little 
child in my 
name." 

And the point 
we desire to im- 
press is that 
every child, no 
matter what its 
antecedents, has 
such unspeak- 
able interests 
depending upon 
the disposition 
now made of it, 
and the circum- 
stances that for 
the next few 
years shall sur- 
round it, that we 
cannot, we dare not, be careless or thoughtless. We 
are treading on holy ground, and should therefore 
"walk softly before God." 
If the president's boy were actually found on the 



X "% 




' 


- - ■■..:, 


■ is* 




ft^^i . 


»*M^ 






I ■ **• 


S "**^^ 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 6l 

street corner in the plight we have described, and 
the president, for reasons of his own, should de- 
cide to let one of us take this boy for a period of 
years, to be trained and fitted for some high and 
noble position, would he esteem it a matter of small 
importance whether the family had a clear sense of 
the responsibilities it was assuming, and some con- 
ception of the kind of care and training the boy 
needed to fit him in the best possible way for his 
future life, and that would therefore devote time 
and thought and heart just as far as possible to the 
attainment of this object ? To cherish any low con- 
ceptions of the obligations assumed, or allow any 
mercenary considerations to hide from view the real 
purpose of the father in committing his beloved child 
to its care would at once prove such family to be 
unfit to be entrusted with so important a charge. 

It is clearly not sufficient that the family be a 
Christian family, or that it take the child free of 
charge. An institutional life, even an almshouse 
might be a safer place in which to rear a boy than 
many a good Christian family, if the persons in 
charge have a clearer and higher conception of 
what they are undertaking. And the family best 
fitted to train that boy and that would do it most 
carefully and conscientiously might very likely ac- 
cept and expect liberal pay for the services ren- 
dered. The mere fact of receiving pay for services 
rendered does not necessarily unfit a person for the 
highest and holiest service. 

The conclusion reached by the best sociologists 



62 THE CHILD AND GOD 

of the present day is that, other things being equal, 
the Christian family is by far the best place be- 
cause it is the natural place for the completest all- 
around development of a child ; and the point we 
desire to impress is that this best place is not an 
ideal place unless the family has reached up in 
some degree to God's conception of the value of 
the child, and has also grasped in a measure God's 
conception of the kind of training and environment 
best calculated to fit that child for its high destiny. 

And if the greatest care and wisdom would be 
exercised in the selection of a home for the train- 
ing of the son of our president, how much more 
need of carefulness and of wisdom in the disposi- 
tion we make of this ragged boy whom we have 
discovered to be a child of a king, and that king 
the "King of kings" and "Lord of lords," and 
whose Father has a very large place for him to oc- 
cupy by and by, and has now providentially thrown 
him into our hands in this strange way to give us 
the opportunity of aiding him in the boy's rescue 
from the grasp of the destroyer, and to fit him in 
the best possible way for the priesthood and the 
kingdom, both here and hereafter, that he has 
prepared for him. 

i. If God has really adopted this child as his 
own, and has entrusted me with its care, then a 
strange sacredness at once attaches to such a trust 
— the consciousness of an exalted mission. It is 
God's child ; he, therefore, is a party to everything 
I do for that child ; not an interested spectator 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 



63 



simply, but a vitally interested party. He owns 
that child, and everything I do for it or neglect to 
do is done for Him or against Him. He sees a jewel 
of incalculable value in that child. Let me there- 
fore beware 
how I esteem 
it lightly or 
despise it. 
He has a 
wonderfully 
exalted mis- 
sion, a king- 
d m pre- 
pared for 
that child 
from the 
foundation of 
the world, 
and is there- 
fore deeply, 
personal ly 
interested in 
every word 
and act by 

which I may influence him. He not only has large 
things in store for this child, but as already learned, 
He can count up the ten thousand streams of influ- 
ence whose measure and power over others are to be 
determined chiefly by the thoroughness of the training 
that I may be able to give him. Let me therefore trem- 
ble lest by any neglect of mine God's plans shall be 




64 THE CHILD AND GOD 

frustrated and that child miss of his kingdom, and the 
whole universe be forever the poorer for my care- 
lessness and sin. Of course, this kind of careful 
and thorough oversight might be exercised in an in- 
stitution or a boarding house. Naturally, however, 
it belongs rather to the privacy of the home life, 
and grows out of the tender and loving ties that 
bind parent and child together, especially in that 
home that has come to recognize God as its center. 

2. It is God's child, and therefore an exalted 
honor to be permitted to receive and care for it. 
Instead of such a child being beneath my grade, I 
am exceedingly exalted by the privilege of receiv- 
ing it. I have become the debtor instead of the 
child, because that child is no longer counted the 
lowly, degraded offspring of some outcast from so- 
ciety. We have discovered that it is a very near 
and dear relative of the great King, and therefore 
worthy of being received and held in honor by the 
most refined and noblest family on earth. 

Suppose this child does by and by begin to ex- 
hibit bad heredities, as very likely he will, what will 
we do with him ? If it was our president's boy, 
what would we do ? For his boy will be found filled 
full of the most mischievous tendencies, and some 
of them very depraving, unless he differs from your 
boy or mine. Will we immediately return him to 
his father with our tale of woe ? Rather will we not 
begin at once with energy and wisdom to wrestle 
with these new problems and seek to overcome 
them ? This little waif, filled full of unfortunate 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 65 

heredities, has yet been adopted by the great King. 
Because he can see wonderful possibilities in him 
he has conferred upon me the distinguished honor 
of helping him to secure for that little child all 
these possibilities. And that there may be no 
chance of failure in my mission, he has put that 
child into my keeping while very young and tender 
and easily molded. He has withal placed in my 
hands for the capture and control of that child, 
agencies and instruments that are absolutely irre- 
sistible, if wisely and faithfully used, his wonderful 
word, quick and powerful, assisted by the Holy 
Spirit, and by his own gracious presence in my 
home and in my heart. Under such circumstances, 
to refuse to receive the child, or to return it in dis- 
gust after it has been received because it begins to 
develop depraved appetites or passions, is to reveal 
an utter misconception of the true situation, a lack 
of high motive in the reception of the child, or a 
want of faith in God's real love and interest in it. 

We do not claim that the discovery of God's rela- 
tion to these outcast children can put into them 
what nature may in some instances have denied 
them. That is, it will not give them natural talent, 
if they do not inherit it. It will not make a dull 
and unpromising child bright. It will not make a 
homely child beautiful, or change red hair to brown, 
or hazel eyes to blue. It will not transform the 
fault-finding, or ugly, or fretful, or selfish, or sinister 
natures into models of innocence and sweetness. 
To receive a child in the name of Christ does not 



66 THE CHILD AND GOD 

mean that such a child will be made over to order, 
and have all its crookedness straightened out. No 
good thing is cheap, nor can be procured for a song. 
" There is no excellence without great labor." 

Naturally we all shrink from hard work, espe- 
cially if it involves sacrifice or suffering or large 
responsibility. If we could take one of these home- 
less ones into our family, and have only a play 
spell, balmy breezes and a smooth sea, or an easy 
down grade, we would not hesitate a moment. But 
when there stares us in the face the practical hu- 
man side, an up-hill tug, great care and trouble, and 
anxiety, and patience, and time, and money, and a 
weight of responsibility, then we shrink back. 

But this is our supreme mistake. The largest 
reward comes through the greatest suffering, exal- 
tation through humiliation ; the crown lies beneath 
the cross ; the sweetest scent comes from the 
crushed flower ; the most beautiful rose is plucked 
from the thorn bush ; the hotter the furnace the 
purer the gold ; crucifixion before exaltation. 

But how difficult for us to realize this, one of 
God's greatest thoughts, and himself the grandest 
illustration of it. We have already learned that 
the saved are to occupy the very highest place. 
But see what it costs ! A mere word of command 
could bring an angel into being, or create a world 
of beauty and people it with intelligences. But to 
lift a soul out of its ruin and up into childhood, oh, 
what an infinite sacrifice on the part of God ! A 
mighty universe could be brought into being and 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 67 

filled with beauty and divinity at a cheaper price 
than it costs to bring one son unto glory. 

It costs us comparatively nothing to secure a 
servant — the payment of a little coin, a paltry pit- 
tance. But to secure a son, a child, oh, what anx- 
ious hours and days and months and years ! What 
travail of soul and body before the child is born 
into the world ! And then what years of care, of 
mingled joy and sorrow ; what anxiety, what yearn- 
ing of soul, what suspense, what hopes and fears ! 
Think of the time bestowed in the rearing and train- 
ing of one child, and the money spent. Oh, it costs 
something to secure a child ! 

But what is the cost of the sowing compared with 
the final harvest, if your child is saved ? What are 
a few years of suffering compared with an eternity 
of bliss and honor and glory ? 

In this little treatise, we are trying to take God's 
side, and ask families to receive the homeless little 
one as their own child, not as a servant. They, 
perhaps, are in need of a servant, and have gone 
to the almshouse, or some "orphanage," or "chil- 
dren's aid society," and asked for a boy or girl old 
enough to serve them. And what have they se- 
cured ? Just what they asked for ; a servant, a 
temporary good, possibly. But their soul has not 
been enriched by the process, heaven has not been 
consulted, the future not considered ; they have 
given nothing to God, have made no sacrifice. 

We come to urge that such families make a great 
mistake in asking for a servant. We come to say 



68 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



that there is a jewel in that abandoned child, a rare 
opportunity of securing riches and glory and honor 
and joy unending. 

But it will cost something, some fellowship with 
Christ's sufferings and death ; it will cost time and 




As Received 



In His Adopted Home 
a Little Later 



money and patience, and wisdom and grace ; it will 
cost many a " heartache " ; it will cost periods of 
disappointment and discouragement and almost of 
despair. But, oh, what has been secured ? A child, 
a child for time and for eternity ! More, a prince of 
the realm, and that realm the mighty universe ! A 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 69 

king and a priest unto God ! What has been se- 
cured ? The Master's presence in the heart and 
life. "For whosoever shall receive one such little 
child in my name, receiveth me." And the Master's 
final benediction, "Ye have done it unto me." 

3. But let us note a third consideration, the wages 
God offers me if I receive this little waif : " receiv- 
eth me," I get the Christ ! The highest wages in 
the gift of the universe ! He does not offer me two 
dollars per week board money. He does not hold 
out as an inducement the little service this child 
can render me as a servant. He simply offers me 
himself ! And suggests that in the final account- 
ing, he will say to me, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
one of the least of these, ye did it unto me." And 
he offers me a star in my crown ! 



V 

THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 

LET it not be imagined that the writer, because 
personally interested in the Children's Home 

Society, is filled with the conceit that this 
society has discovered God's secrets or is the cus- 
todian of this ideal method in child rescue. We 
frankly confess that we believe this is God's plan 
and therefore the ideal plan, but just as frankly 
confess that the Children's Home Society falls far 
short of it in its practical, everyday experiences. 
The large majority of the families that receive its 
children are as yet evidently governed chiefly by 
selfish and mercenary motives, so much so that the 
agents of this society have to be constantly on the 
alert lest the best interests of the children be neg- 
lected. And this is one reason why this booklet 
is written and is needed — to lift the standard higher, 
educate the people by holding up God's ideal. 

Nevertheless, the Children's Home Society has 
a most remarkable history, a history that very 
clearly stamps it as from God. It originated in 
Illinois twenty-two years ago with the rescue of 
one beautiful baby girl from an almshouse and 
placing it in a Christian family for adoption. It 
now has twenty-six separate State organizations 

70 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 



71 



that are doing work in thirty different States of the 
Union. It has already cared for more than twenty- 
five thousand children and is receiving at the rate 
of about five thousand homeless children each year, 




making it the largest child-saving agency in our 
country if not in the world. And these twenty- 
five thousand children have been placed in care- 
fully selected Christian homes, not as boarders or 
as servants but as members of the household and 



72 THE CHILD AND GOD 

enjoying all the social, educational, and religious 
privileges granted to an own child. In fact, nearly 
one-half of them all have been legally adopted, 
while those not adopted are under the constant 
watchcare of the society by means of a very simple 
and yet very complete and efficient system, a local 
advisory board in every town and separate com- 
munity in each State where organized, and district 
superintendents, from two to ten of them in each 
State, according to the size of the State, who give 
their whole time to the work, first, of investigating 
personally and thoroughly each family in their dis- 
trict who make application for a child, and then 
regularly visiting each child placed in their district, 
removing the child if a mistake is discovered in its 
placement or encouraging and helping with kindly 
advice, etc. 

And while our plans and methods are yet in their 
formative state and a large proportion of the appli- 
cations that come to us for children are still prompted 
by narrow and selfish and in too many cases by 
sordid and mercenary motives, yet with great grati- 
tude to God we are able to point to a few genuine 
examples. 

The following incident, picture and all, is clipped 
from our little paper, " Homes for the Homeless, " 
under date of October, 1900 : 

One of the most interesting items of the summer has been 
the apparently genuine conversion of one of our little girls, 
only nine years old, and who has been in the care of the society 
over four years, giving us an immense amount of anxiety. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 



73 



We have placed her in five different families, three of these 
during the past year, but in every case she was returned as 
unmanageable. She had grown to be saucy and independent 
and apparently reckless of the consequences of her unruly 
ways. It would be impossible to give in a few words any 
idea of the variety and character or the problems an earnest 
Christian mother 
would find herself 
facing in the man- 
age m e n t of that 
child. 

On the very day 
that the word came 
from the fifth family 
to come and take her 
away we received a 
letter from a conse- 
crated Christian 
woman who four 
years ago had taken 
this girl's next older 
brother and has led 
him to Christ and 
made out of him a 
boy that almost any 
family in the State 
could be proud of. 
The substance of 
the letter was that, 

after thinking about the matter for some time, she had de- 
cided to consecrate her life to the work of leading that refractory 
girl to Christ. 

Our eyes moistened upon reading that letter. We lost no 
time in getting this perplexing problem into her new home, 
little dreaming that the Lord would so speedily show his ap- 
proval. A work that this earnest woman had figured on re- 
quiring years of patience and great heart burden has suddenly 




74 THE CHILD AND GOD 

(in about one month) been crowned with so marvelous a 
transformation that the child has become the joy of the 
whole household. Instead of a burden and a care, a " pest ,; 
to be endured for Christ's sake, she has become a blessing 
and a joy. How speedily, sometimes, the Lord turns our 
hardest crosses into our greatest treasures ! 

And already the Lord is using this interesting incident in 
encouraging other families to receive incorrigible boys and 
girls for the purpose of leading them to Christ. When this 
class of Christian families is multiplied throughout the 
country one of the most difficult social problems of the age 
will be in a fair way of settlement, the disposition to be made 
of the hundreds and thousands of our youth who are on the 
way or already in the reform school. 

This was over four years ago. It may be in 
place to say that while this girl is still a child with 
all the buoyancy and life and sometimes thought- 
lessness of the child nature, she is regarded as a 
genuine Christian, a thoroughly transformed child, 
with a promising future if the foster mother, in 
her poverty, can give the child the training and 
schooling necessary to secure best results. 

The following is clipped from a recent number 
of '• The Children's Friend," the organ of the 
Children's Home Society of South Dakota : 

Some years ago a lady with children of her own came to 
the home after one of our little ones and her heart went out 
toward a little blind child. After she was in her home for a 
time she took her East for treatment. This she did three 
times, and at last had the gratification of seeing her restored 
to sight, so that she is able now to attend the public school. 
This, of course, was a heavy expense, but she did it for 
Christ's sake, who said, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 75 

the least of these ye did it unto me." But that is not all. 
The foster parents now write for adoption papers so that the 
child may have equal property rights with their other chil- 
dren. And yet blatant demagogues will say that putting 
children in such homes is farming them out to make serfs of 
them. In this connection we want you to read the following 
letter from a foster parent addressed to Brother Slingerland, 
our Iowa superintendent, and published in the organ of his 
society, the " Children's Home Herald " : 

DEAR SIR : Thinking it might be of interest to the society 
and the public in general to know that all children taken into 
adoptive homes are not disappointing (as the mercenary and 
unthinking would have us believe), we write to tell you of 
our experience now after seven years with one of the little 
souls that was adrift on the vast sea of humanity. 

He came to us after you had placed him three times in other 
homes. He was six years old, small and delicate, with a 
well-developed case of chronic catarrh. Well, we sized him 
up and said, " We will raise him to maturity and then he will 
die of tuberculosis." Not much encouragement from a money- 
making standpoint, and we were only in ordinary circum- 
stances. But humanity said, " Here is a little soul dependent 
in every sense of the word," and if there ever was a case of 
humanity that blended into real religion this was one of them, 
and, as we had experienced and observed only theoretical 
religion, we had a curiosity to tackle the real thing. 

We took the boy, placed him on a bread and milk diet (not 
skim milk), and allowed him whatever else he wanted pro- 
vided it was digestible, but he seemed to desire more than 
anything else bread and milk. This agreed with him and he 
grew. We dressed him in flannels winter and summer and 
still do now. After seven years we have practically cured 
his catarrh and he still uses a milk diet to a great extent. No 
patent on this recipe. Milk diet, patience, and time are the 
ingredients. So much for the physical. 

The child being delicate, we did not start him to school 
until he was seven years old. He showed in the beginning a 
desire for tools. When he was given a nickel he bought nails 
and by degrees we bought him tools as he demanded them. 
This is his recreation. Of course he skates in the winter time 
and goes swimming in the summer time, like other boys. He 
goes to school, likes the school, reads the daily paper, the 



76 THE CHILD AND GOD 

44 Scientific American " (which is bought for him exclusively), 
the " Youth's Companion " (which is for all children), and 
books from the public library. 

He can tell you the relative strength of the world's navies, 
he knows their ships by name, he knows the special mechan- 
ism of the latest built gunboats, has wrecked old sewing 
machines and clocks, knows how they run and why they run, 
knows a stationary steam engine and can name its parts ; 
understands steam, its force, and how it is made ; knows the 
chemical analysis of water, air, and several gases, and is 
studying the elementary chemistry. These, of course, are not 
school studies ; they are studies on the side. They were left 
in his way. If he had an appetite for them the affinity would 
assert itself. He would read trash novels too, but he and his 
mother discuss them, and they have already left a bad taste 
in his mouth. He does not find that class of literature at 
home. He is very musical, has tune and time well developed, 
and has an unusually sweet voice. He is now thirteen years 
of age, is strong and healthy, and if he lives he wiH^he a 
graduate of Armour's School of Technology. 

To say we are privately and silently enjoying or receiving 
our reward does not express it. We put our money in a 
44 prospect hole " of humanity and are so far getting diamonds 

Yours truly, A FOSTER PARENT. 

This is, of course, an exceptional case, and yet 
who can tell how many diamonds of exquisite 
beauty and inestimable value may be lying around 
in the slums or at the bottom of the great sea of 
humanity only awaiting some skillful diver to bring 
them to the surface and an artist who knows how 
to cleanse and polish them into beauty and glory ? 

And may we suggest still further that, while 
every child thus received will not develop such 
special talent and so speedily prove a diamond 
from the " prospect hole," yet if the reasonings 
of this treatise are correct you have only to wait a 
little longer and be gifted a little with the vision of 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 



77 



God to see more than diamonds in every child taken 
out of the " deeps " of sin and depravity and trans- 
formed into a child of God and an heir of glory. 

We will venture for the sake of the lesson to give 
another incident not quite so promising as the 
foregoing. 

A boy of four- 
teen years had 
been in the care 
of the New Jer- 
s e y Children's 
Home Society for 
a year and a half, 
and been re- 
placed again and 
again until we 
were discouraged 
and had decided 
that the reform 
school at James- 
burg was the 
only alternative. 
He was bad in so many ways that we had al- 
most reached the conclusion that he was beyond 
the reach of the grace of God, at least so far as 
our weak faith and our facilities as a society were 
concerned. All the workers of our society, includ- 
ing the matron of our Receiving Home and the force 
in the central office, had come to agree with the 
different families that had him on trial, that the 
reform school was the only place. The superin- 




78 THE CHILD AND GOD 

tendent alone hesitated. It occurred to him that 
the boy had never yet had a first-class chance to be- 
come a Christian. As his surroundings had all been 
unfortunate before he came under the care of the 
society, and the families that had since been 
intrusted with his care had asked for a boy old 
enough to be of service ; and while they were all 
good Christian families, it was apparent that the 
thought uppermost in their minds was the service 
he could render them ; and because he was not 
used to work, nor very reliable, had certain bad 
habits, and was otherwise more trouble and expense 
than he was worth, they returned him to the society. 
Not one of them made a special effort to lead the poor 
boy to Christ y and not one of them had thought of 
sacrificing their work or their financial interests in 
order to reform and save him. 

So before consenting to place the boy in the 
reform school, the superintendent went up into 
the northern section of the State and spent a Sab- 
bath with a consecrated farmer who had already 
led one wild boy to the Master's feet. The family 
had no use for the extra boy, at least for the 
winter ; but after a full statement of the case they 
decided to receive him, and did, just to help save him. 

The boy began to improve right away. In three 
weeks the report was "the boy is all right"; later, 
"doing finely"; two months later, "improving 
every day." The superintendent from the very 
first felt a confidence that the boy would be rescued 
and would develop into a valuable manhood. The 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 79 

reader can therefore imagine his sore disappoint- 
ment when, after six months of improvement the 
boy took it into his head to run away, and succeeded 
in covering up his tracks so completely that we have 
never learned his whereabouts. A great many 
earnest prayers have been offered for that boy and 
some good seed was sown that may yet take root 
and bear fruit in the years to come, though for the 
present we are disappointed. 

This is an ideal case in theory, and though its 
practical results have not yet developed, we have 
given it because it presents so clearly the central 
thought of this treatise, receiving an outcast, un- 
promising child in the name of Christ. We could 
give instances far more promising, for though our 
experience in child rescue is as yet quite brief, the 
cases are increasing. In fact, we are persuaded 
that this ideal conception is slowly but surely get- 
ting into the thought of a constantly increasing 
number of Christian families who ask for children. 
The facility with which the Children's Home 
Society in the different States finds free homes for 
all classes and all ages of children, without offer- 
ing board money or other mercenary inducements, 
is simply marvelous, considering the conditions, 
especially here in the East. It cannot be satis- 
factorily accounted for by the fact that there is a 
large number of families without children, many of 
them longing for a child to love ; for this fact has 
existed all along in the past. Years before the 
Children's Home Society came into existence there 

F 



80 THE CHILD AND GOD 

were empty hearts, thousands of them, longing for 
a child to love, and there were hundreds and thou- 
sands of children thrust into almshouses, or left 
without care to drift into the reform school or into 
the criminal ranks ; or if earnest Christian hearts 
were moved to place these children in Christian 
orphanages, they had to be kept there until old 
enough to be of service before these empty-hearted 
and desolate family homes were willing to receive 
them. What was the matter ? The answer has 
already been given ; it was the bugbear of heredity, 
or the caste prejudice. These children from the 
almshouse and from the slums were not counted as 
the grade of children to be received into intelligent 
and refined family circles as an own child. It is the 
discovery of God's relation to such a child, his 
deep interest in it and its exceeding worth in his 
estimation that is rapidly changing the whole aspect 
of the child-saving problem. It is lifting the ban 
that has so long prohibited such unfortunate chil- 
dren from the social privileges of the average child, 
undermining the caste prejudice, and pulling down 
every wall of separation. Now, not only homeless 
children, but real outcasts, children filled with 
unfortunate heredities, are taken by parties who a 
few years ago would not have entertained the 
thought for any consideration. God's view of the 
child is gradually gaining a foothold, not through 
the agency of the Children's Home Society alone 
or chiefly, but a thousand things have conspired 
together to bring about this triumph of the truth. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 



81 



God himself is coming to the front, and this is one 
of the many evidences of his stately steppings. 

At the annual conference of the National Chil- 
dren's Home 
Society re- 
cently held in 
St. Louis, Rev. 
Dr. Hastings 
H. Hart, the 
super intend- 
ent of the 
Children's 
Home Society 
in Illinois, and 
the recognized 
leader" of this 
form of child- 
rescue in our 
country, stated 
in a public ad- 
dress that the 
whole history 
of child-rescue 
for the past 
fifty years and 
more reveals 
God's hand with unmistakable distinctness — a 
constant evolution, a gradual progression from the 
lowest ideals to the highest. Especially from the 
day over fifty years ago when Mr. Brace, now 
of sainted memory, became possessed with the 




82 THE CHILD AND GOD 

idea that family life instead of institutional life 
was God's plan for every child, and through great 
opposition and bitter criticism at first, began to ship 
in carload lots the homeless children rescued from 
the slums in New York City out to the Western 
States to be placed there in family homes, without 
much thought at the beginning as to the character 
of the family that received the child, only so that 
it was a family, the work and the ideals have been 
gradually developing up to the present hour. One 
man or one society or institution has developed one 
thought, another man or institution another thought, 
until we have apparently reached the perfect ideal 
so far as methods and machinery are concerned. 
Our great need now is not an improvement of 
methods or increase of machinery, but the breath 
of God imparting spiritual life and spiritual vision 
and motive, so that Christian families in need of a 
child can take God's view and be controlled by his 
high and holy motives. And we fondly believe this 
is coming. Our God is marching on. His views 
are bound to come to the front and completely 
triumph sooner or later. And even now God has 
evidently undertaken to encourage and to honor 
any and every child-saving agency that will raise a 
high standard. Our experience has been uniformly 
this : That the more careful and exacting we have 
become in insisting upon thoroughly Christian 
homes and Christian motives in the reception of 
the child, the more God opens homes and hearts 
for the children we have to place. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 83 

Of course, we are all human, and God does not 
ask nor expect us to throttle our natural appetites 
and cravings. He gave John the Baptist to the old 
couple who had never had a child, and because they 
recognized that boy as God-given and as having a 
very high and glorious mission, and because they 
had a keen sense of grave responsibilities in the 
training of that boy for his high mission ; yet that 
did not interfere in any way, or lessen their natural 
love for their boy, rather they loved him the more. 
The higher his mission and the more completely he 
belonged to God and to the entire nation, the prouder 
they must have been of him, and the more careful in 
their training for his high and holy mission. 

So people may be expected to ask for children 
because they want a child to love. A large vacant 
place in their hearts is demanding an object of 
affection ; and while that demand is natural and 
God-given, this treatise is insisting that there is a 
still higher conception ; that this child they ask for 
is of high birth, and if led to Christ may become a 
"greater than John the Baptist"; in fact, is 
related to God, and therefore to the throne of the 
universe. And so while they can gratify in the 
completest possible way their natural instincts and 
cravings for a child to love, they can at the same 
time have that natural love intensified and increased 
a hundred-fold by the knowledge of the high birth 
and the grand future God has planned for that child, 
if they can at all rise to the situation and faithfully 
perform their duty in its training. 



84 THE CHILD AND GOD 

We may also expect people to keep on asking for 
children from mercenary motives, or because they 
need a child to help them about their work. This 
too is natural. They have the work ; it has to be 
done ; and it is not wrong to want a child to help 
to do it. Nor is it a wrong to the child to be placed 
where it will be obliged to work and work hard. 
Hard work and plenty of it is often the salvation of 
a child. " The devil finds some mischief still for 
idle hands to do." Far more children are spoiled 
by idleness than by hard work. It is no valid 
objection therefore to an applicant for a child that 
he needs the child's help. We are simply trying 
to lodge in these good people's heart and thought 
a far higher conception — that here is a golden 
opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone"; 
that while they are securing some needed assistance 
in their farm work or in their household duties, they 
at the same time have the high honor of "enter- 
taining unawares" more than "an angel," and the 
unspeakable privilege of pleasing God, and accom- 
plishing an untold good for posterity and for God's 
whole universe. 

And one happy thing about it is, that the more 
prominently this higher object is kept to the front 
in the training and the treatment of this child, the 
larger returns will be secured in the lower realm. 
That is to say, the boy that is led to the Lord Jesus 
Christ as the first and most important move, and 
then taught the highest conception of obligations to 
God and to those around him and to the eternal 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 



85 



world, is the boy who will do the best work and 
become the most satisfactory helper in everyway. 

Jesus himself was trained in his boyhood by 
parents who had some conception of his exalted 
mission here on earth. And their training of him 
was so success- 
f ul that at 
twelve years 
of age he was 
certainly a prod- 
igy of wisdom 
and understand- 
ing for a boy of 
his age. But this 
special training 
did not interfere 
at all with his 
learning the car- 
penter's trade, 
and finally be- 
coming, as we 
are told, after 
the death of his 
reputed father, the support and comfort of his 
mother and his younger brothers and sisters. 

So, because a Christian farmer needs a boy to 
assist him about his farmwork, this need not stand 
in the way of his rising to the sublime conception 
of God's ideal, and receiving that boy as a sacred 
trust from the Master, and during all his stay on the 
farm counting him as a younger brother of the great 




Jesus in the Temple 



86 THE CHILD AND GOD 

King, destined to sit with the King upon his throne of 
universal empire, and therefore making it his supreme 
care and highest privilege to so educate and train that 
boy as to fit him for his future high vocation. 

The large majority of our business men, and the 
men who stand at the head both in the Church and 
in the State, were raised on farms. Country life, 
all things considered, is probably the safest and the 
best in which to rear lawyers and preachers and 
judges and senators and presidents. And so we 
can see no reason why a farm shall not prove to be 
the very best place here on earth to train "kings" 
and "priests" who, during the future ages, are to 
occupy the most prominent places in the govern- 
ment and control of God's mighty universe. 

But if a farmer comes to us for a boy, with evi- 
dently only the one mercenary thought of help on 
his farm — no matter how good a Christian he may 
be, or how high a place he may occupy in the 
church and in the community — we are becoming 
more and more reluctant to trust a boy in his hands. 
For we have had this vision of God, and feel sure 
he has entrusted this boy to our care to help secure 
for him his birthright and his crown ; and we do 
not feel authorized to place him even in the very 
best of homes, unless we have some assurance 
that these higher interests of the child will be 
carefully guarded. 

In saying this, however, for the Children's Home 
Society and its methods, I confess I can see no spe- 
cial reason why every other method of child-rescue 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 87 

may not be lifted up to the same high plane and 
seek only or chiefly the highest interests of the 
child — and especially the institutions, the orphan- 
ages that are usually controlled by thoroughly 
Christian people and are not hampered by State 
control. Why may not and why should not every 
Christian organization whose business it is to care 
for homeless and dependent children, fall into line 
with this new order of things, and so recognize 
God's interest in a needy child and God's willing- 
ness to aid in providing the best thing for it, that 
it can rise above the "caste prejudice" and the 
"servant problem," and say to every selfish and 
mercenary applicant for a child, " Hands off ! This 
child is altogether too important a personage and 
has altogether too valuable a future to be entrusted 
to unholy hands"? From past experience, we 
feel sure that no orphanage or other institution 
would be obliged to keep children until old enough 
to be of service ; for, as a rule, the families that 
receive a child for Christ's sake are inclined to 
take it earlier in life, if possible, so as to be sure 
of a larger outcome and better results. 

The mercenary applicant says: "We want a 
child not less than twelve years old ; if still older, 
so much the better." 

The applicant with this higher motive predomi- 
nant would say : " The older the child is, the more 
firmly its evil habits are rooted, and therefore the 
more difficult and uncertain the problem of its sal- 
vation ; and if saved, its mental and moral, and 



88 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



possibly physical life are so far wrecked by sinful 
associations and indulgences that we could never 
hope to build up so beautiful and complete and useful 
a life and character as if the child were younger. " 

The one applicant has as a central thought the 
amount of work the child will be able to do ; the 
other applicant, the amount and quality of the 
character he may be able to put into the child. 



A WOMAN'S MIRACLE 

John Green Brady, the governor of Alaska, has never 
known the name of his father or mother. Years ago, when 

he was a street gamin in New 
York City, selling newspapers 
and blacking shoes, he was 
just " Brady." So the other 
street arabs called him. 

One day with a carload of 
other waifs he was shipped out 
West. Judge Green, of Indiana, 
saw the carload of boys and 
told his wife about the invoice 
of youngsters. She thought 
they ought to take one. " Very 
well," said the judge, "I'll 
pick out the toughest specimen 
of the lot." 
He selected " Brady." 
Now, in the homely phra- 
seology of Indiana, " You 
can't never tell what may be- 
come of a lousy calf." Mrs. Green got hold of the boy's 
heart. Her refining influence soon had its effect on the young 
barbarian. He saw the world would give him a chance. 
Ambition spoke to him. 




Rev. J. G. Brady 
Governor of Alaska 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 89 

He clung to the name of " Brady " and left all his old life 
behind him. Henceforth he was John Green Brady. 

To make a long story short, the boy went through the 
grades and high school at the head of his class. Partly by 
his own efforts and aided partly by Judge Green, he went 
through Yale college. Then he was sent as a missionary to 
Sitka, Alaska. He became the best-loved man in that country, 
and was appointed governor. 

FROM THE "FIVE POINTS" 

One Sabbath morning, in the First M. E. Church, of St. 
Paul, Minn., after an address by the Rev. E. P. Savage, 
superintendent of the Minne- 
sota Children's Home Society, r— ™~~ — — 

the pastor of the church stated 
to his people that when a little 
boy of five years of age he was 
brought from the slums of New 
York City with a carload of 
other boys and " dumped out on 
the prairies of Minnesota." He 
was now the brilliant and much- 
loved pastor of one of the larg- 
est churches in the Northwest. 
When he had finished h i s 
statement, a fine-looking, well 
dressed, gentlemanly appearing 
stranger in the rear of the congre- 
gation arose and asked the priv- Ex-Governor Burke 
ilege of making his statement. NoRTH Dakota 
" I too," he said, " like this 

pastor, when a little boy, was brought from the Five Points in 
New York City out to the prairies of the West." He was at 
that time governor of North Dakota, a man of noble character 
of brilliant mind, and loved and honored by all who knew him 

We insert these two pictures side by side because, as Provi- 
dence would have it, these two men, when little abandoned 




9 o 



GOD AND THE CHILD 



waifs from New York City, were brought West on the same 
car, and occupied the same car seat together, about forty years ago. 
They were brought to Noblesville, Indiana, and there placed 
in separate families to be trained for grandly successful lives — 
the one through a business career and the law into a governor's 
chair in North Dakota, and the other through a Presbyterian 
pulpit and a missionary to the same high position in Alaska. 




President McKinley helped to organize the " Ohio 
Children's Home Society " in 1893. He was elected 
its first president and retained the office until his 
death. He was deeply and personally interested 
in its humane work, contributing freely both time 
and money. 



VI 

THE GREAT OBJECTION 

BUT you are thinking, if you do not say it, ' ' Oh, 
if I could only know that the results will be 
as you say, that the child would certainly 
be saved ! I would be willing — I know I would — 
to make almost any sacrifice of time or means or 
patience. But who can tell what the outcome will 
be ? Is it not a dangerous experiment to take a 
child whose antecedents are unknown, or are 
known to be bad, possibly very bad ? May it not 
prove the taking of an adder to my bosom ? It is 
true God loves that child with an infinite love ; 
but so has he loved every child that has afterward 
gone to the bad. A multitude of the best Chris- 
tian parents have failed in leading their own chil- 
dren to Christ, with all their inherited good qualities 
in their favor. What, assurance then, can I have. 
that this child can be certainly saved, with all its 
inherited tendencies against such a consummation ?" 
This is an honest question that demands an 
equally honest and earnest answer. A complete 
answer, however, would require a careful inquiry 
into the perplexing problems of heredity, ipuch too 
large a subject, and quite outside the scope of this 
little book. 

91 



92 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



A few brief suggestions must suffice : 
i. You who take an outcast child for Christ's 
sake, that is, for the express purpose of rescuing it, 
have greatly the advantage of the " multitude of the 




best Christian parents " who have failed to lead 
their own children to Christ. These " best Chris- 
tian parents " have sadly failed at two vital points. 
They did not -"take" their child for Christ's 
sake. It came to them unsought, very likely un- 
desired. The Lord Jesus was not consulted or his 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 93 

aid invoked in the introduction of that little life 
into its earthly condition. You, on the contrary, 
have taken this outcast child for the express pur- 
pose of leading it to Christ and securing for it a 
home with him and with yourself in glory. 

As Jesus was not consulted or honored in the in- 
troduction of those children into their home life, so 
we fear it is true he has not been consulted, or his 
word carefully followed and honored in the after- 
rearing and training of those children. God's word 
is exceedingly plain and explicit as to how Chris- 
tian parents should train their children. There is 
no possibility of misunderstanding its plain and 
positive requirements. But these explicit instruc- 
tions have been largely ignored by these Chris- 
tian families. The probabilities are that they have 
never so much as read their Bibles once through 
/or the express purpose of finding out how to train 
up their children so as to lead them to Christ and 
fit them for heaven. 

In the education and training of their children, 
they have probably followed the customs of society 
around them and left the Bible out of the account. 
They do, of course, take their children with them 
to church and send them to Sabbath-school regu- 
larly ; and perhaps once a year, or once in two or 
three years, under the excitement of some special 
evangelistic services, they have exhibited a deep 
personal interest in the salvation of their children. 
But all the rest of the year worldly matters have 
had the right of way, exclusively so, possibly, 



94 THE CHILD AND GOD 

except two hours on the Sabbath. The result is 
the Bible is practically an unknown book to those 
children, except the brief and scattered lessons se- 
cured at the Sunday-school ; and the idea that the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness should be a 
first consideration and the all-important business of 
life has never been drilled into their thought and 
life by anything they can see in the life and the 
aspirations of their parents. 

You, on the contrary, having first taken this out- 
cast child for the express purpose of leading him to 
Christ and fitting him for heaven, will have that 
purpose constantly before you, and will therefore 
be looking out for ways and means to accomplish 
that purpose ; and if you are wise, will be con- 
stantly and prayerfully consulting your Bible for 
pointers ; and thus securing wisdom from above, 
you will be able to " train up your child in the way 
he should go.'' 

At these two vital points these "best Christian 
parents" have sadly failed, and therefore furnish 
reasons enough why their children have not thus 
far become Christians. We have called these two 
failures "vital points." We do not mean that those 
parents have so badly sinned that they can never 
hope for the salvation of their children. Those 
children are not at fault for their parents' neglect. 
And God is so deeply anxious for their salvation, 
that he stands ready and waiting and anxious for 
the parents to remove the obstacles that have so far 
prevented him from stretching out his arm for their 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 



95 



rescue. Whenever those parents will humble them- 
selves before God and repent in dust and ashes for 
their past neglect of their children, and begin so 
far as possible to " repair damages," and enter into 
solemn covenant with God that hereafter they will 
faithfully perform their duty toward their children, 
as God's word may point it out to them, God is 
gracious and ready to forgive, and will remove their 
sins as far from them as the east is from the west, 
and save their children. 

But up to the present time you have immensely 
the advantage of those "best Christian parents," 
so far as effectually reaching 
your child with gospel influ- 
ences is concerned, in that 
you first received him in the 
name of Christ, and since 
receiving him, your great 
aim has been to secure his 
salvation. 

2. Our second suggestion 
is that there may not be so 

much difference as you imagine between the hered- 
itary endowments of your abandoned child and the 
children of these "best Christian parents." We 
cannot enter into this discussion, though exceed- 
ingly interesting and a wonderful "eye opener." 
We will briefly suggest : 

That those "best Christian parents," even if 
they were much better than they are, did not and 
cannot transmit to their children their regenerated 

G 




96 THE CHILD AND GOD 

Christian natures. They can only transmit the " old 
Adam," not the new creation in Christ Jesus. And 
the " old Adam " in them may be about as depraved 
and sensual and devilish as the "old Adam " in the 
parents of this abandoned child you have received. 

One of the noblest, sweetest-tempered and most 
thoroughly consecrated ministers of the gospel in 
the State of New Jersey has a son who is a thor- 
oughly bad boy, a real reprobate ; and the good 
man, when asked how it was possible for such an 
earnest Christian man to be the father of such a 
son, replied, " Before I was converted I was as bad 
as they make them. Was called ' the young devil/ 
and counted the worst boy and young man in the 
neighborhood. My boy does not inherit his father's 
renewed, regenerated nature, but the ' old Adam/ " 

But if the inherited tendencies of your child are 
much more degraded and sensual, he may not be 
on that account harder to reach and subdue by the 
grace of God than are these other more favored 
children. That is to say, if your boy has a natu- 
ral tendency to lie or steal or be foul-mouthed or 
saucy, or exhibit other indications of the slum life 
or the depraved environments of his parents, these 
other children will probably inherit more of pride 
and vanity and self-conceit ; very likely also, more 
stubbornness of will, and more of the grasping, 
hoarding propensity called in the Bible " covetous- 
ness." And these hereditary tendencies are really 
more difficult to reach and restrain than the lower 
tendencies' in your boy simply because they are 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 97 

more respectable in the public eye. The devil can 
more easily persuade the children of respectable and 
refined Christian parents that they are good enough 
already. So that, all in all, this poor outcast boy 
that you have received in the name of Christ may 
be no harder to reach and subdue by the grace of 
God because of his degenerate birthright. But 
even if he were harder to reach, as we estimate 
difficulties, it is encouraging to know that there is 
nothing hard for God. 

While our Lord Jesus was here in the flesh, it did 
not seem to make any difference to him whether the 
person in need of healing was just beginning to lose 
his eyesight, or whether his eyeballs were wholly 
destroyed and their sockets empty ; whether the 
patient was sick with a little fever or in the last 
stages of the loathsome leprosy ; whether possessed 
of one or a legion of devils — the same omnipotent 
word easily prevailed. And whether the needy 
came to Jesus in his own behalf or was brought to 
him by anxious friends, the results were always 
the same. So it is not a question of the amount or 
degree or character of the degraded and sensual 
tendencies with which your child was born, but a 
question of the amount and character of your faith 
in the mighty Deliverer — whether it is an intelligent 
faith inspired and directed by the conditions plainly 
set forth in the word of God. In other words, your 
success in the rescue of your child depends upon your 
relations with the Lord Jesus Christ and his word, and 
not upon the character of the child's heredities. 



9 8 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



3. A third suggestion is that it is the word of God 
lodged in the heart of the child by the Holy Spirit 
that leads to his conversion and salvation. There 
seem to be two steps in this process : first, the 
child needs to get acquainted with himself, with 
his own need, that is, with the situation, the real 
facts regarding his life and conduct, his relation to 
God ; and then second, he needs to become ac- 
quainted with the Lord 
Jesus Christ as his Sav- 
iour and friend and 
helper. And the word 
of God is the Spirit's 
chosen instrument for 
accomplishing these two 
ends. 

The following is the 
substance of an article 
that has twice appeared 
in our little quarterly, the organ of the New Jersey 
Children's Home Society, and is placed here for the 
sake of the lesson so plainly set forth : 

TRY THE BIBLE ON HIM 

We are often asked by anxious foster parents, " What can 
we do with our boy? He will tell such awful stories. We 
can't place any dependence whatever upon anything he says. 
He will make a lie right up out of ' whole cloth,' and face us 
down in it, and stick to it." 

This is the one almost universal sin with the larger boys, 
and the girls too, that come under our care. Stealing, or petty 
thieving, comes next in its frequency ; then, perhaps, swear- 
ing ; and the anxious foster parents, after talking, reasoning, 




THE GREAT OBJECTION 99 

pleading, and perhaps scolding the unfortunate child until 
tired and discouraged, finally sit down and write to the super- 
intendent as above. 

This is a very perplexing problem, and we have often been 
at our wit's ends to frame an answer that would be of any 
practical value whatever to the anxious ones who write us. 

The difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that the moral 
nature of such child has been neglected and remains unde- 
veloped, and the ordinary methods of educating the moral 
sense and awakening the conscience along these special lines 
have been overlooked. 

Evidently, in the plan of God, his word is the irresistible 
agent for arousing the conscience and quickening the moral 
sense. It is represented as the " sword of the Spirit," sharper 
than any two-edged sword, " quick and powerful " " piercing, 
even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit ; a dis- 
cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is called 
a " hammer," able to break in pieces the flinty heart. Jesus 
says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth 
nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit 
and they are life." " The flesh profiteth nothing." Our 
words fall lifeless and powerless, our appeals and reasonings 
and pious talks profit nothing ; Jesus' words only are " spirit 
and life." They take hold with irresistible power. They get 
down into the depths of our nature, and take hold of hidden 
forces that are not reached by our platitudes and eloquent 
appeals. God himself calls our words " chaff," as compared 
with his, and asks, " What is the chaff to the wheat? " In 
Isa. 55 : 11 he says, 4t My word . . . shall not return to me void, 
but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper 
in the thing whereto I sent it." 

We would suggest, therefore, that instead of talking so 
much to the boy about the folly and the sin of lying or steal- 
ing or swearing or whatever his special fault may be, and 
appealing to his pride or his ambition or his manhood, that 
you simply, but earnestly, " try the Bible on him." 

Hunt up the passages, a large number of them, all through 

LcrfC. 



100 THE CHILD AND GOD 

the Bible, on the subject of lying, for instance, and read them 
to him, or have him read them carefully over. Perhaps re- 
quire him to commit some of them to memory, explaining the 
hard words, if there are such in the passage, and so put the 
boy face to face with God. 

The following passages are suggested as specimens : 

Lying forbidden : Lev. 19 : 11 ; Prov. 24 : 28 ; Eph. 4 : 25 ; 
Col. 3 : 9. 

Hateful to God : Prov. 6 : 16-19 > I2 : 22 - 

Threatened with punishment : Ps. 5 : 6 ; 52 : 1-6 ; 55 : 23 ; 
Prov. 12 : 19 ; 19 : 5, 9 ; Rev. 21 : 8, 27. 

Abominable : Ps. 101 : 7 ; 119 : 163 ; 120 : 2 ; Prov. 13 : 5 ; 
19 : 22. 

Characteristic of a fool : Ps. 58:3; Prov. 10 : 18 ; 14 : 5, 
25 ; Isa. 30 : 9. 

Comes from the devil : John 8 : 44 ; Acts 5 : 1-10. 

When the boy finds out that it is God himself speaking 
directly to him he will feel very differently about the message 
than when you are speaking upon your own authority or 
experience to him. 

And precisely the same process for arousing the 
conscience and quickening the moral sense, if in- 
stead of lying the bad habit in your child should be 
swearing or petty thieving or some other habit that 
is offensive to God and ruinous to the soul. 

But possibly there are no specially bad habits in 
your child to fight against and eradicate. The chief 
difficulty may be simply carelessness, neglect, a 
gay and giddy, self-seeking, pleasure-loving life, 
thoughtlessness as to spiritual interests, a lack of 
appreciation of the wonderful personal love of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. But this attitude of careless- 
ness about God's claims and the claims of our own 
spiritual natures is more offensive to God than 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 101 

either of the above bad habits. To forget God is 
an awful crime and is so presented in the Bible. 
And still a greater crime is unbelief or a refusal to 
open the door and let Jesus come in. If Jesus is 
standing at the door and knocking for admittance 
to your child's heart and life, that child ought to 
know it and know it thoroughly. He ought to be 
made to understand how mean and selfish and de- 
praved a condition of heart that could allow the 
best and noblest and most loving friend in all the 
universe to come to his door and knock for admit- 
tance and be refused ! 

But let all these views of truth, this presentation 
of the child's needs, his great sins, and the won- 
derful love of God as exhibited in Christ Jesus 
come to him through the words of Scripture. Let 
it be always understood that it is God who is speak- 
ing, not the parent or the preacher or the Sunday- 
school teacher. Because God's words are so dif- 
ferent from our words, as already suggested, God's 
word proves to be. a sharp sword with two edges, 
it not only arouses the conscience and quickens the 
moral sense when backed up by the Holy Spirit, 
it does vastly more. It gets down into the heart 
and begins a new life there ; hence is called "seed," 
living seed (see i Peter i : 23 ; Luke 8:11, etc.). 

And do we readily take in the full meaning of 
this statement, that God's word is living seed ? If 
you and I were skillful we might manufacture a 
kernel of corn that would appear to be an exact 
copy of one of God's kernels. If we were very 



102 THE CHILD AND GOD 

skillful we might make it so exact a copy that the 
most skillful chemist could not detect any differ- 
ence. But plant our production in the best possible 
soil and under the best possible conditions and it 
would not grow. Why ? Simply because there is 
no life germ in our kernel. God puts a life germ in 
every kernel he makes, such that when planted 
under appropriate conditions it grows and develops 
a new life. We cannot do that. Omnipotence 
and omniscience alone can put a life germ in a 
kernel of corn. 

So God's words are strangely different from our 
words. He seems to have put life germs in them, 
life germs of such character that when planted in 
the heart of a child under appropriate conditions 
they will grow there and develop a new life, the 
life of God in the human soul. 

But the devil is wary. He understands the char- 
acter of God's word, its irresistible and transform- 
ing power, and so is on the alert, and as soon as 
the seed is sown he catches it away if possible ; 
hence the help of the Holy Spirit is needed to do 
two things for that child : 

Help him to understand clearly the meaning of the 
message he reads ; 

To prevent the devil from catching it away until 
it has had time to make its impression and get 
firmly rooted as seed. 

Do not, therefore, content yourself with simply 
requiring your child to commit God's word to 
memory, and then leave it to the Holy Spirit to use 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 103 

his own words as a sharp two-edged sword or as 
living seed. The Holy Spirit expects us to co- 
operate with him and work with him just as far as 
we possibly can. Hence it is your privilege as a 
parent to sit down with your child and carefully go 
over with him each one of these passages from 
God's word. Do it very earnestly and thoroughly, 
pray over each separate passage, pleading with the 
Holy Spirit in your child's presence to make the 
meaning of this passage very plain to him, to 
" show them M to him. This will impress upon the 
child the great sacredness and the importance of 
God's words and thus aid the Holy Spirit in fixing 
them in the memory and getting them down into 
the heart as living seed. 

The point we are anxious to emphasize is the 
great importance, the absolute necessity of using 
God's word with your child instead of your words, 
God's thoughts instead of your thoughts. One of 
the most common mistakes of Christian parents is 
that they talk with their children, talk very ear- 
nestly perhaps and plead with them very tenderly, 
and pray for them as earnestly and tenderly, but 
forget to furnish any material to work upon. It is 
as if a farmer should plow his ground and harrow it 
thoroughly and put it in the best possible condition 
to raise a crop, and then pray God to give him a 
good harvest, but forget to sow any seed ! 

This is what we do so often. God's word is the 
living seed. There is no possible genuine con- 
version apart from God's word. The Holy Spirit 



104 THE CHILD AND GOD 

must have his sharp, two-edged sword if he would 
reach the conscience. He must have his living 
seed if he would begin a new life in the soul, and 
it is our province to furnish him that sword and to 
sow the seed. It is his province to get down into the 
conscience and make that sword cut ; to find his way 
into the heart and see that the seed sown is lodged 
there until it germinates and develops a new life. 

And the beauty of it is that the Holy Spirit can 
always be relied upon to do his part faithfully 
and successfully, if we do our part faithfully and 
thoroughly and ask his help with persevering 
earnestness. 

Permit us to urge still further that you do not 
delegate this important duty and privilege to some 
one else, to the Sunday-school teacher or even to 
the pastor. Of course, you will gladly accept their 
assistance, but in reaching your child you have im- 
mensely the advantage of anybody else, for your 
child believes in you and loves you and you love 
your child as no other person can, and love is irre- 
sistible. You can get closer to your child and be more 
persistent and intent than any other person can. 

A remarkably suggestive scene is that recorded in 2 Kings 
4 : 34-36, the restoration of the dead boy to life. The prophet 
went alone into the room where the dead child lay, and after 
shutting the door and praying, " He went up and lay upon 
the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes 
upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands : and he 
stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child 
waxed warm." 

And this process was repeated until " the child opened his 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 105 

eyes" and life was restored. Whether a designed type or 
not, there is in this strange scene a beautiful suggestion of 
God's method of bringing dead souls to life, by having a live 
soul, one full of the Christ life, come into such close and per- 
sistent contact with a dead soul, as that the warmth and heat 
of the one shall become contagious, and by and by impart 
itself to the other. Or to express it in another way, this man 
whom I wish to reach and save has ears, but he does not hear 
God's warnings or his gracious promises, and so I put my 
ears into his ears' place ; I hear for him. He has eyes, but 
they do not see the dangers that beset him, or the glorious 
things that are offered him ; but I see these things clearly, 
and so I become eyes to him. He has a mouth, but it has 
never been opened in prayer to God, and so I talk to God in 
his behalf, as he ought to talk for himself. His heart is cold 
and dead, and so I put my heart in his heart's place and at- 
tempt to feel for him the burden of soul and the agony of 
interest that he ought to feel for himself. 

And thus I put my soul in that soul's place so closely, so 
persistently, that he cannot help but catch my fire and become 
warm from my heat. 1 

And the point we make is that there is no person 
on earth who can do this for a child quite as effect- 
ively and persistently as the parent, because of the 
natural relations that exist between them. 

As you value your child's soul, therefore, do not 
delegate this unspeakable privilege to anybody else. 

If you have neglected this duty to your child alto- 
gether in the past you will very likely shrink from 
it now. A consciousness of neglect and of guilt 
before God will arise. And the more you think 
about it and pray over it the greater and darker 
that guilt will appear. You have loved your child 

1 " Every Creature," pp. 46, 47. 



io6 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



all these years and yet have committed the great 
crime of overlooking and persistently ignoring its 
highest interests. You have yourself found a friend 




The Adopted Girl Ahead 

Said a vulgar little girl, who was sneering at another, 

In accents that were very far from mild, 
'You ain't got no father, you ain't got no mother — 
You ain't nothin' but a horrid 'dopted child !" 

" I'm quite as good as you," came the answer from the other, 
" I was carefully selected from a lot ! 
But only look at you — your father and your mother 
Had to keep you if they wanted to or not." — Selected 

in the Lord Jesus Christ, better to you, more 
precious, more valuable and desirable in every 
way than all other friends together, and yet you 



THE GREAT OBJECTION 10J 

have never introduced that dearest friend to your 
child. On the contrary, the adversary of souls, 
the devil himself, has gotten possession of your 
child and is gradually leading him to ruin, and the 
child is blindfolded and therefore quite unconscious 
of the situation, but you can see. You understand 
the situation and yet have remained silent all these 
months and years past. 

All this consciousness of personal neglect of your 
child's highest interests will naturally lead you to 
shrink from the duty and obligation now, and you 
will be tempted to appeal to the child's Sunday- 
school teacher or to the pastor or some other person 
to perform this service for you. But the very fact 
of past neglect is the reason why you may not and 
must not shirk. Your own attitude toward your 
child in the past has very likely been the main 
reason why God has not been able as yet to save 
him, and if so, then you are the main obstacle in 
the way of your child's salvation, and you cannot 
shirk with safety to the child ; besides, the richest 
blessing to your own soul lies right under this cross . 
Try it and see. 



CHAPTER VII 



SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 



1. Advantages of God's Plan 

(i) All other methods may or may not have re- 
gard to the best interests of the child. They are 
liable to have most prominent the interests of the 
other party. God's plan has 
the future of the child always 
to the front. 

(2) All other methods are 
liable to overlook God's rela- 
tion to the child and his inter- 
est in it. But this plan never. 
In it God is exalted and his 
claims recognized. 
(3) Applicants for a child, under control of any 
of these lower motives, may be unfitted to have 
the care of the child. A few days before last 
Christmas one of the largest daily papers in Phila- 
delphia gave quite a unique notice of the work of 
the New Jersey Children's Home Society by adver- 
tising the fact that the said society had babies to give 
away as "Christmas presents." The result was 
a great flood of applicants, good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent — for nearly all people love children. However, 
scarcely one in ten of these applicants measured 
108 




SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 109 

up to our requirements. We have constantly to 
refuse applicants who possess one very important 
recommendation — they love children dearly. 

On the other hand, we have never yet had reason 
to refuse an application from a person or family 
able to reach so high a standard as to receive a 
child for Christ's sake, or for the sake of the child's 
future. Such families will necessarily be intelligent 
people, people who have clear views of God's in- 
terest in that child, and of the child's future. They 
will be thoroughly consecrated people who can rise 
above personal and selfish interest and worldly con- 
siderations, and therefore can always be counted 
upon as first-class applicants. No second-rate family 
can reach so exalted a position. 

(4) This plan secures God's presence and aid 
in the training $p6 -care of the child, and therefore 
the best reasons .for expecting success and happy 
results. All other plans have no such promise 
or assurance, and therefore frequently are most 
unpleasant failures. 

(5) This plan therefore secures not only the best 
interests of the child, but the best interests of the 
family, its spiritual uplift, a consecrated Christian 
life, clearer views of God and unseen realities. At 
the same time, as already shown, it insures best 
financial returns from the child taken. 

(6) It insures a better child in every way. The 
family's treatment of the child will have more of 
tenderness and love, as well as more of wisdom 
and firmness. This will react upon the child in 



no 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



returned affection, in more respect and reverence. 
The child will become a more thoroughly reliable 
and helpful child, and therefore more a comfort and 
satisfaction to the family. 

(7) This plan is the only one that lays up treasure 











<w,'. 




is* # ' 


^PWI «s 


*4F® & ' ' stm 




p 




fej 


'iHiH^^H 




H- 




4 






^ 1 

* 1 


Jg ■ ■;,,-» • j® 






r " ff %P 


i 


«*&".■-*!*-.,. 


%&' 


- :„ ___- -o#55gP^^il 




M -~~~*r$ 





Four Brothers, of Good Parentage, Made 

Homeless by the Death of 

Their Mother 

in heaven. The child is taken chiefly for the sake 
of its future, and during the countless ages of eter- 
nity, the family will be reaping a harvest of joy and 
happiness, and of gratitude to God that he permitted 
them while here to aid him in securing one more 
king and priest for his universal empire- 



SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS III 

2. Two Practical Conclusions 

(i) All the considerations and appeals and lessons 
in this treatise are quite as applicable to own parents 
as to foster parents ; and if carefully read and pon- 
dered ought to greatly intensify parental love, and 
lead to larger plans and more intense anxiety to 
capture their children for God, and make of them 
all that it is possible to make. 

It is exceedingly sad to contemplate the seeming 
carelessness of so many Christian parents as to the 
moral and spiritual environments of their children. 
Treading on holy ground — and every step almost 
leaving a mark upon the character and life of their 
children that all the after years and ages cannot 
erase — and yet how thoughtlessly and how care- 
lessly that step is taken ! 

It does seem to this writer that if a Christian 
parent could once get a clear view of the real situa- 
tion — that the child committed to his care furnishes 
the grandest mission and the highest and the most 
sacred and the largest that can be committed to 
any intelligent being in God's universe — such a 
view would at once give an inspiration and furnish 
a motive that would control the whole life in the 
interests of that child's future. 

And what a sacredness would it give to mother- 
hood and to fatherhood ! A clear conception of God's 
thought and God's interest in a child will revolu- 
tionize not only our methods of child training but our 
views of child bearing, and would speedily transform 
this wicked, ruined world into a garden of God. 

H 



112 THE CHILD AND GOD 

(2) Second practical conclusion. If the consid- 
erations and arguments in this little treatise are 
correct, what grander work possible to the church 
of Christ to-day than a systematic, thorough, and 
persistent effort to reach every child in the com- 
munity with the gospel ? 

The Sunday-school as an institution is a noble 
effort in this direction — the bringing of Bible in- 
struction within reach of all the children. But it 
does not quite meet the demands ; in the very 
nature of the case it cannot. 

As to the children of Christian parents, the Sun- 
day-school does not reach God's ideal. One hour 
a week out of one hundred waking hours is not 
quite God's plan for the capture and control of our 
children in the interests of their spiritual nature. 
It gives the devil too long a rope to have the inside 
track with the child ninety-nine hours out of every 
one hundred. God's plan seems quite fully set 
forth in Deut. 6 : 6-9 : 

And these words, which I command thee this 
day, shall be in thine heart : 

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy 
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
thine house, and when thou walhest by the way, and 
when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 

And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine 
hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine 
eyes. 

And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy 
house, and on thy gates. 



SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 1 13 

That would certainly give God the first chance 
with the child, give him instead of the devil the 
inside track during the ninety-nine waking hours. 
And this obligation of the parent cannot, of course, 
be cancelled by sending the child to Sunday-school 
one hour on the Sabbath day. 

It does not and cannot reach all the children. 
Less than one-half of the children of school age in 
our country attend Sunday-school, and these are in 
the main children of Christian parents. The chil- 
dren most in need of religious instruction do not go 
to Sunday-school because their ungodly parents will 
not consent. If these are reached at all, it must be 
by individual, hand to hand and heart to heart 
work. We have to "go out into the highways and 
hedges and compel them to come in." And in the 
light of the discussions in the preceding pages, if 
such inconceivable value attaches to each one of 
the children in my neighborhood, does it not lay 
upon me and upon every Christian in the neigh- 
borhood an obligation that we cannot very well 
evade, to bring all these children so far as possible 
under saving influences ? 

And we will venture to suggest that the Chil- 
dren's Home Society, where thoroughly organized, 
is already quite well equipped for such an under- 
taking. We have or are supposed to have a local 
board, as we term it, a branch of the State organ- 
ization, in each town or separate community in 
the state. This local board is made up of a few of 
the best, most earnest Christian people in the 



114 THE CHILD AND GOD 

community who love children. Their business is to 
report to the State superintendent every case of a 
child as soon as it comes to need, to look up and 
report as to the character and standing of every 
family in their community that applies for a child, 
and when a child is placed in such family to keep 
careful watch and report to headquarters, when de- 
sired, how the child is getting along, how treated, 
whether sent to day school, to Sunday-school, etc. 

As now constituted, this local board waits until 
the devil has accomplished all his work of wreck 
and ruin in a certain household, broken up the 
family, thrown the children out upon the street ; 
then it reports the sad facts to the superintendent : 
"Five bright children are without a home and 
need the society's care." And the society steps 
in to gather up the broken fragments and do the 
very best it can with these outcast children. It 
finds large-hearted strangers willing to take them 
in and provide them with good Christian homes. 

Now, suppose this wideawake and consecrated 
local board could discover the situation in that un- 
fortunate family before the crisis came, and trip the 
devil in the very midst of his nefarious scheme and 
save the household from wreck ? Possibly get hold 
of the mother and lead her to Christ, or even the 
father ? It might require a large amount of earnest, 
persistent, personal effort and a mighty struggle in 
wrestling prayer. But that kind of exercise would 
put new life and strength and power into that local 
board, give it plenty of thoroughly Christian work 



SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 1 1 5 

to do, a work that would be quite in keeping with 
the spirit of our mission as a society — to get neg- 
lected children into Christian homes. It would be 
a work of prevention ; and " an ounce of prevention 
is worth a pound of cure." 

In this way thousands of homes where sin reigns 
and where tens of thousands of innocent children 
are fast going to destruction might be changed into 
Christian homes, and the parents patiently and lov- 
ingly helped to train all these children for Christ 
and for heaven. There would really be no limit to 
the possibilities of such a work, for it could be ex- 
tended until it took in every unconverted family in 
every community in our land. 

And while such evangelizing agency is, of course, 
outside of the scope and intent of the Children's 
Home Society as at present constituted, there is 
certainly nothing in its constitution or in its princi- 
ples to prevent its local boards from undertaking 
such a work, if they were willing. 

But the Children's Home Society is as yet only 
organized in a portion of the States, twenty-six all 
told with four others as auxiliary, and in these thirty 
States there are a great many communities where 
no local boards exist ; whereas the work we have 
suggested appeals not to any special organization of 
Christian people ; it appeals to all organizations, 
to the church universal, and to every individual 
Christian who loves Christ and loves souls and 
wants to do the largest possible work in the 
redemption of this lost world. 



n6 



THE CHILD AND GOD 



Let a mothers' club be organized in every com- 
munity, whose special object shall be to reach 
every unconverted mother and lead her to Christ, 
and then aid her by wise counsel and by earnest 
and persistent prayer in training her children in the 
way they should go. Let the young people's soci- 
eties, the Christian Endeavor- 
ers, the Epworth Leaguers, 
the Baptist Young People's 
Unions, the Andrew and Philip 
organizations, etc., undertake 
the work of reaching every 
child in their respective com- 
munities old enough to be led 
to Christ, perhaps secure the 
names of such children and di- 
vide them up among the work- 
ers, each Christian worker be- 
coming responsible for three 
or five or possibly ten such 
children, according to the cir- 
cumstances and the time at his 
or her disposal. And then hav- 
ing received such charge, let each worker first of 
all "size it up," that is, carefully and prayerfully 
study the problems he has undertaken to solve, the 
unspeakable value of each one of these young im- 
mortals committed to his care, God's interest in 
each one of them, his willingness to aid in any ear- 
nest effort to reach them, the instrumentalities he 
has provided, the place of the word, the place of 




SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 117 

the Holy Spirit, the place of individual personal 
effort, and especially the place of effectual, fervent 
prayer. Then go about the task with confidence 
and hope, conferring frequently with the mothers' 
club, asking the pastor's advice, presenting his bur- 
dens now and then at the weekly prayer meeting, 
and persist in this kind of effort until the end is 
secured and the children reached. 1 

The parents may be rescued with immense and 
persistent effort ; the children can be reached and 
with far less effort. This is therefore the grandest, 
most important work of the present century. And 
how else shall the world ever be reached ? If the 
children are led to Christ and filled with Bible 
truth, it would mean the ushering in of the millen- 
nium,, the beginning of the end in the redemption 
of this lost world. 

1 For a somewhat extended presentation of the methods and value of per- 
sonal, individual work read a little book just published, "Success in Soul- 
Winning." The Winona Publishing Company, Chicago, 111. Price, in 
paper, 25 cents. For sale by American Baptist Publication Society. 



APPENDIX 
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 12. Abandoned by mother. Received when three 
months old and placed the same day in a Christian home — 
nine years ago. 

Page 23. A Christian mother dies, leaving four bright little 
boys in the care of the father who does his very best to keep 
his family together. But obliged to be absent all day at his 
work, the boys, without the mother's constant care, easily 
drift into the street, and after a year's experience the father 
decides that the best thing for his boys is to place them in 
Christian families through our agency. The youngest of these 
four brothers is the little boy at the right in this group of three. 

The little boy at the left, the brightest and most promising 
of the three, was abandoned by his mother when a little babe, 
the name " Freddie" being the only asset left him by either 
parent, whose very name and place and character are unknown. 

Page 25. Of respectable parentage on both sides. Mother 
died, father unable to care for him. 

Page 30. Born when the political pot was boiling the very 
hottest during the first race between Mr. McKinley and Mr. 
Bryan. As the baby had no legal father and was abandoned 
by his mother, and had possible presidential timber in him, he 
was named after both the candidates so as to be sure to bear 
the name of a president. 

Page 53. The most of us take a deal of stock in our knowl- 
edge of human nature. We would be greatly pleased to see 
our readers pick out from this group of twelve the children of 
bad heredities or unfortunate antecedents. The results would 
probably be amusing at least, if not an "eye-opener," and 
very likely upset many of our theories of heredity. 

119 



120 APPENDIX 

The whole twelve have an unusual development of the moral 
organs, as the phrenologists locate them — that is, the central 
and highest group, the middle top of the head. Not one of them 
looks very dangerous ! And yet they are all illegitimate. 1 

Page 60. Abandoned by father, mother dead, released by 
grandmother. Now developing into a beautiful and valuable 
young womanhood. 

Page 63. Once homeless ; now the center and joy of an 
earnest Christian home. 

Page 71. Released by mother. Now contented and happy 
in a foster-mother's love. 

Page 81. Abandoned by a drunken father. Released by a 
mother in poor health. Been now nearly six years in a 
pleasant country home. 

Page 92. Over nine years ago the superintendent received 
an earnest letter from a local board in South Jersey, stating 
that a mother had just lost a baby boy at birth. She had lost 
two others before in the same way and was now almost over- 
whelmed with grief. " Can you possibly furnish us with a 
baby boy for her?" The superintendent was obliged to reply 
that we had no baby boy in hand. The very next day, how- 
ever, he visited a prominent town in the northern part of the 
State, and as he alighted from the train the first man he met 
was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and the very 
first words he uttered were these : " Say, Brother Lamb, can 
you find a home for a little baby boy just born here, and 
whose mother died a few hours after its birth ? ' 

1 Possibly some of our readers have not considered the fact that the 
majority of the mothers of illegitimate children are young girls of good 
character and of good parentage, who have been betrayed under promise of 
marriage or by over-confidence and love, and have spent nine months of the 
bitterest repentance for their sin. Their whole moral nature has thus been 
thoroughly aroused, and so far as it is possible for mothers to do so, have 
stamped an awakened moral sense upon their offspring which reveals itself 
in an unusual development of the moral organs, as noted above. 

Of course, if the mother is a loose character and conscienceless, these 
results will not appear. But only a very small proportion of the illegitimate 
children who come under our care have lewd or characterless mothers, 
probably not more than one in ten. 



APPENDIX 121 

It took but a few days to bring these two strange provi- 
dences together ; and the reception of that baby boy by that 
broken-hearted mother is among the memories that can never 
be forgotten. Perhaps two years afterward the Lord kindly 
permitted that mother to give birth to a healthy child of her 
own which appears at the left of the sturdy boy now adopted 
and installed as the elder brother in that home. 

Page 95. Abandoned by mother ; now adopted in a happy 
Christian home. 

Page 98. Once homeless ; now a centre of sunshine and joy. 

Page 108. A family had lost the only child, a daughter 
three years old. The mother was unable to be comforted, and 
at the end of the year was gradually sinking into a physical 
decline. Her physician and her husband urged her to accept 
a substitute. This beautiful child, not quite two years old, 
filled the vacant place so completely that they were ready to 
adopt her a week after her reception. 

Page 116. This boy came to us through a Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He is doing nicely in an 
earnest Christian home. 

The above taken together will give a very good idea of the 
character and quality of the work now being done in thirty 
different States by the Children's Home Society. 

M. T. L. 



SUCCESS IN SOUL WINNING 

i6mo. 200 pages. Price, 25 cents net 

With brief introductions bv J. Wilbur Chapman, D. D., and 
A. C. Dixon, D. D. 

"Success in Soul Winning" is designed as a companion to "Every 
Creature." " Every Creature " presents chiefly the obligation to reach 
every unreached soul; "Success in Soul Winning" the HOW to do it, the 
privilege and power of the individual Christian. 

While perhaps not so original or striking as " Every Creature," it covers 
a larger field and contains more of a practical and helpful nature. 

"Calvary Baptist Church, 

" Washington, D. C, February 18, 1905. 
"I have read 'Success in Soul Winning,' by the Rev. M. T.Lamb, with 
pleasure and profit and commend it to the reading of those who pray for the 
coming of Christ's kingdom. Saa\uel H. Greene." 

" ' Every Creature,' by the Rev. M. T. Lamb, is now followed by 'Success 
in Soul Winning,' the latter introduced by Drs. J. Wilbur Chapman and 
A. C. Dixon. To distribute these little books freely among the people, 
better still, to use them as texts for reading and comment from night to 
night, will by the blessing of God be among the most mighty agents for arousing 
Christians to personal prayer and effort for the unsaved of any helps known to 
me."— ALBERT G. LAWSON, in The Baptist Commonwealth, Philadelphia, 
Dec. 15, 1904. 

" Dear Bro. La.wb: Permit me to thank you for your book, ' Success in 
Soul Winning.' It is a thought starter. The Lord give it wings ! I wish 
your message to pastors could be read by every pastor in our land. I en- 
dorse every line of it. Yours in him, James A. FRANCIS." 
(Successor to Rev. A. J. Gordon, of Boston.) 

The Rev. Dr. Barnes, who has taken so deep an interest in " Every Crea- 
ture," ordered 500 copies of "Success in Soul Winning " before it was 
written. Within a month after the 500 copies had been delivered to him he 
sent his check for 100 additional copies. 

The following are specimens of the letters he is receiving from New York 
pastors to whom he has sent copies of the book : 

" It is one of the best volumes on soul winning I have read."— Clayton 
Grinnell, Baptist Pastor, Ossining, N. Y. 

"Fellow pastors are talking about this all-important theme while they 
read and reread the book."— F. W. Carter, McLean, N. Y. 

" I have read the book with a real interest and profit and must say that it 
is the best that has come to my notice, and I have at least a half-dozen of 
the best at my elbow. The author is Scriptural, suggestive with sane, prac- 
tical suggestions, and alwavs writes in a sweet, helpful spirit." — Chester 
F. Ralston, Pastor First Baptist Church, Gloversville, New York. 



Published by the WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY, Chicago, III. 
For Sale by AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, Philadelphia, Pa. 



j&^Any of Mr. Lamb's books can be secured at the office of the New 
Jersey Children's Home Society, Trenton, N. J. 



The Mormons and Their Bible 

By M. T. LAMB 

With Introductory Note by C. B. Landis, Member of Congress 
from Indiana 

Price, 25 cents net; postpaid, 30 cents 

DERHAPS few Christian men have a more intimate 
* knowledge of Mormon affairs than Mr. Lamb. Besides 
spending several years in Utah, traveling all over the territory 
lecturing daily to great crowds of Mormons against their Bible 
—the " Book of Mormon "—he spent a year and a half in the 
East preparing his material, reading and consulting personally 
with the best authorities. The result was a book bearing the 
title "The Golden Bible," universally conceded to be the 
most effective blow ever delivered against the Mormon system. 
The present volume is a recasting and condensing of the origi- 
nal book, with a very valuable Introductory Chapter upon 
" The Mormon Problem." 

" We have examined this work closely and unhesitatingly commend it as 
the most forceful and useful treatise on Mormonism that has yet appeared." 
— The Arkansas Baptist. 

" Mormonism has not received so severe a blow as is dealt to it by the 
Rev. M. T. Lamb in this volume. . . He certainly makes mince-meat of the 
'Book of Mormon.' "—Julian Hawthorne, in the New York World. 

" This book is a help to the great endeavor . . . and under the blessing 
of God will help to extirpate the monster."— New York Observer. 

" Against the heart and center of the whole system, its right and title and 
revelation, he brings an assault whose deadly force must be apparent to the 
most ordinary Mormon intelligence. Criticism has proved its salutary 
power before, but it was never before brought to bear on a better subject 
than when Mr. Lamb set out to apply its principles to the ' Book of Mormon.' 
He has done his work thoroughly." — New York Independent. 

" It is one of the most convincing exposures that has ever been printed of 
the clumsy plagiarisms on the Bible with which the Mormon scriptures are 
filled." — The San Francisco Chronicle. 



AMER. BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

1420 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 



\ 



Every Creature 

i6mo. 94 pages. Price, 15 cents. 

How to reach the great mass of the unreached in our country 
is evidently the largest problem now before the church of 
Christ ; and " Every Creature," though a little book, is evi- 
dently contributing its mite in helping to solve the problem — 
hence is awakening unusual and unexpected interest. 

The first edition of 3,000 copies was exhausted in two 
months. A second and third edition were called for within a 
year. 

Rev. Dr. H. W. Barnes, Superintendent of Baptist Missions 
for the State of New York, has purchased and given away, 
chiefly to the Baptist pastors of the State, 675 copies. Rev. 
Dr. Crumpton, of Montgomery, Ala., 400 copies. The 
superintendents of New Hampshire and Vermont have each 
distributed 100 copies. A goodly number of pastors of various 
denominations have already ordered from 25 to 100 copies 
each to be distributed among their own people. 

" I said something of its effect upon my own heart and mind. How that 
I'd begun it and was so won by it that it refused to let me put it down until 
I'd finished it, and that I finished it upon mv knees in a flood of tears. Well, 
God bless it and its faithful author."— W. W. Barker, Pastor, Phillips- 
burg. N. J. 

" Have read it with intense interest. As a proof of my appreciation of it, 
I have ordered ioo copies, and will advertise and press the sale of it. It is 
calculated to do immense good."— J. M. PlKE, editor " The Way of Life," 
Columbus, S. C. 

" We commend this book and the class of books to which it belongs as 
about the best kindling for a revival that can be used. Many who read this 
book will feel first like falling upon their knees and confessing past delin- 
quencies and calling upon God for grace for personal service, and then 
going out and doing something."— Sunday School Work, Cumberland Presb., 
Nashville, Tenn. 

" Please accept my deepest gratitude for ' Every Creature.' I have read 
it again and again, and the spirit of it is getting hold of me. Oh, how far 
short I come to it all. I am talking it to mv people everv night this week." — 
F. H. W atkins, Russellville, Ala. 

"I beg you to read and re-read the little book until you are saturated 
with the truth it unfolds. Then get a few brethren together, read and dis- 
cuss it. Then introduce it in the prayer meeting. Ask the Woman's and 
Young People's Societies to take it up. Then preach about it for six 
months."— Rev. Dr. Crumpton, to 500 Baptist pastors in Alabama to whom 
he presented the book. 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
1420 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 



APR 15 1905 f 



< 



I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



027 293 309 1 



